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Dr Karl: Good morning, here Dr. Karl.
If you’ve been following the science of climate change, you’ve come across the phrase “carbon footprint”. This carbon footprint should reflect the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions created by an individual, product, service, organization or event.
The word “footprint” is rather self-explanatory – the mark or traces left by a foot – but it has been co-opted to describe our impact on the world in many different ways. For example, in 1965, NASA used it to mean “the proposed landing area for a spacecraft”.
The phrase “carbon footprint” is a more recent variation. It was used in 2000 by a Texas electricity salesman when talking about global warming, as in “It is essential to reduce our environmental impact and, at this point in world history, to reduce our environmental impact.” But the phrase “carbon footprint” became really popular around 2005, when it was used in an advertising campaign by Ogilvy and Mather, a marketing company. It appears to have been conceived as a clever marketing ploy to shift some responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from large fossil fuels to individuals.
Of course, it is good for all of us to be aware of our emissions and to reduce them as much as possible, whether it is citizens, companies or governments. It has become a pleasant thing that resonates with all branches of society. Unfortunately, it turns out that the actions of individuals can only reduce global emissions slightly. In reality, significant reductions depend on a major change, at higher levels.
But first, a little background on what our carbon footprints look like. In 2014, the global footprint per person, calculated on average for the entire planet, was about 5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Mind you, for countries like Australia and the US, it increased by around 25 tons per person, so this meant there was a large number of people elsewhere emitting much less.
So what are the main things an individual can do to reduce the size of their carbon footprint?
Well, having one less child in the family makes the biggest difference. Everything else has much less impact. But going without a car saves 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, while switching to an all-plant diet will save about three-quarters of a ton. Washing clothes in cold water and drying them on a clothesline will save around a quarter ton per year.
But these are small changes in the context of our average of 25 tons per person. So why are our emissions so stubbornly high? Partly because Western societies are so deeply married to fossil fuel energy.
In the United States, even a homeless person has a carbon footprint of approximately 8.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is 70% higher than the global average.
But what about a pandemic? Surely COVID-19 has impacted heavily on our greenhouse gas emissions?
When it hit the planet in early 2020, there were rotating blocks all over the world. People worked from home and barely left the suburbs. Around the world, transportation and manufacturing have fallen enormously and economies have suffered. But the result was that in the first six months of 2020, greenhouse gas emissions fell by only about 8.8%.
Hence, the correction for global warming will require more than the actions of individuals, or even a global pandemic. For the major reductions in emissions we need to limit the impacts of climate change, we will need the action of those at the top: fossil fuel companies.
We live in a world where energy still comes predominantly from fossil fuels.
The primary way to reduce the global carbon footprint would be to shift our energy production from fossil fuels to renewables. In the 1970s, large fossil fuel companies funded research on climate change. In 1982, they predicted that if fossil fuels remained the main source of energy, by 2020 the increase in global temperature would be about 1 ° C and carbon dioxide levels would be about 415 ppm. By 2020, 38 years later, that prediction was remarkably accurate. Fossil fuel companies knew what was happening and what the future held.
But in 1990 these companies changed direction and, instead of funding and accepting the science of climate change, many began denying it. Some have started lobbying governments to continue burning fossil fuels and have even begun to fund massive disinformation campaigns.
The result? We have moved slower than we could, and 19 of the last 20 years have been the hottest years on record.
But there is some hope.
Fossil fuel companies are being forced to change, often through new regulations, or even just through market pressure now that the price of renewables has dropped so significantly.
And we’ve also learned from other industries that denying having an impact, contrary to scientific consensus, doesn’t get you very far.
For example, let’s take a look at the once common refrigerant chemicals that were depleting the earth’s ozone layer.
CFCs are chemicals that attack and destroy the ozone layer at high altitudes. But when CFCs were invented in the 1930s as a refrigerant, no one knew how dangerous they were. They have been seen as a wonderful solution for keeping refrigerators cold. If they do escape, they won’t poison you and they won’t burn or explode. It took about half a century before scientists discovered that CFCs were damaging the ozone layer. Many of the several dozen companies that produce CFCs have tried to deny this fact. They also claimed that there were no viable alternatives to CFCs as a refrigerant gas. But the societies were wrong and the scientists were right. So the governments of the world, through the Montreal Protocol of 1987, banned CFCs, just two years after the hard data arrived.
But imagine if those CFC companies were able to stop the Montreal Protocol and were allowed to keep pumping CFCs, that they would have further destroyed the ozone layer? Imagine even if they ran a massive disinformation campaign and ran ads telling people it was their responsibility to use their fridges less often !?
Well, that’s basically what the very successful “carbon footprint” ad campaign did with carbon emissions around the year 2005.
And only history will tell how much more time was bought by the fossil fuel industry.
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