Measuring our carbon footprint has become an integral part of living an environmentally conscious life. Our showers, car rides, electricity usage, and waste production are calculated to produce a single value of how much CO2 emissions we, either individually or in our households, produce. From there, we take steps to reduce our carbon emissions: for example, less time in the shower and more recycling. Evaluating our carbon footprint forces us to assess our contributions and impact to the global climate crisis; as a result, individual sustainability efforts have been shaped around reducing one’s carbon footprint. What if there is more to the term than meets the eye?
A 2020 Mashable article, “The devious fossil fuel propaganda we all use'' sought out to uncover the past of sustainability and climate change efforts’ favorite buzzword. Mark Kaufman reveals that the phrase “carbon footprint” has politics and history that riddle the term with contradictions. The phrase was created by a collaborative effort between BP (yes, the oil company) and a PR agency as part of a campaign to shift the burden of pollution from the oil corporations to the individuals. In short, carbon footprint emerged from a sinister effort to hide BP’s drilling into the Earth to obtain pure oil, while in the process, releasing harmful toxins into the air. Kaufman notes that not only did BP succeed in shifting the attention of the public away from their environmentally devastating actions, but triumphed in adopting “the term into our normal, everyday lexicon.”
The politics of sustainability must not be ignored; it must be looked in the eye, acknowledged, and fought.
Sustainability may seem like a neutral, apolitical practice, yet it is the background of terms that shape sustainability efforts like “carbon footprint” and other realities that challenge the political nature of sustainability. The politics of sustainability is not limited to the dark past of carbon footprint. The politics of sustainability include the fact that companies like BP can create buzzwords to avoid the responsibility of their environmentally devastating actions while communities of color grapple with the worst effects of climate change. BP’s 2000 advertising campaign illustrates how companies turn a blind eye away from communities of color. The politics of sustainability must not be ignored; it must be looked in the eye, acknowledged, and fought.
While the introduction of the term “carbon footprint” did shift our attention to our individual environmental actions, not acknowledging the broader implications of corporations’ impacts on the environment hinders sustainability efforts from going forward. We must combine individual activism that sprouted from the carbon footprint campaign with pushing oil and other major corporations to adopt environmentally-safe practices. We must also be consciously aware of the environmental racism communities of color face. Our individual actions do matter, yet to truly combat the climate crisis, we must directly protest the companies that have exacerbated the climate crisis.
I think it is important to ask: how do we deal with the contradictions exposed by the history of “the carbon footprint”? First, we must not let the contradictions hinder our efforts to combat the climate crisis and adopt sustainable lifestyles. Instead, I think it is important to reflect that our actions do have an impact on the planet and that it is critical that we analyze our waste production, gasoline consumption, and water usage. On the other hand, I believe we must look at what brought us to evaluate our individual actions in the first place. If the reason we are looking at our everyday tasks with a critical eye is because a corporation proposed the term for us, then I think it is time for reevaluation. Kaufman argues: “While superficially innocuous, ‘carbon footprint’ is intended to manipulate your thinking about one of the greatest environmental threats of our time.” To do our part in the climate crisis is to take action individually whilst also thinking in a macro-scale. What to do next? Follow Kaufman’s words: “rewrite the narrative.”
Maria Duran Gonzalez is currently living in Miami, Florida, and is a first-year prospective Environmental Analysis major. She is passionate about food justice, gardening, and intersectional environmentalism.