Bigger distractions than BP’s
People constantly cite BP’s promoting personal footprints as a distraction. Nearly everyone who cites it acts like a know-it-all so I find them annoying. The main reason I find them annoying is they use it to justify themselves buying more of what BP sells.
I wish more people understood how their minds rationalize and justify, but I’ll write about that topic in another post.
Today I want to point out two giant distractions more relevant than whether we attribute emissions to companies or the people who buy from the companies.
Distraction 1: emissions distracts from extraction
We shouldn’t use emissions as the most important measure of greenhouse gases, but extraction. Burning wood doesn’t introduce new greenhouse gases into the biosphere. Extracting fossil fuels does. I wrote about this concept in Know the 2 carbon cycles and don’t confuse them and Carbon offsets increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere. They do not decrease or offset them. They increase them.
Distraction 2: volume of emissions distracts from money spent
People develop carbon calculators to find out how much some activity emits. I don’t oppose such measures, but a simpler one works and requires no calculators or research.
How much money do you spend on polluting, depleting goods and services?
You can guess for many products and services about how much goes to polluting, depleting, and maybe more important advertising and lobbying. When you buy, say, locally grown produce, most of your money is probably going to salaries and farming materials. Some pays for fuel, which will find future polluting and depleting.
When you buy a plane ticket, cell phone, plastic product, factory-farmed meat, or many other things, you can guess a large portion is going to extraction. Other large portions probably fund advertising and lobbying.
People who think they are helping the environment but who buy polluting, depleting things generally fund the causes they think they’re working against. Do you think airlines mind flying people to climate protests? Why would they? Those people are buying their fares.
Read my weekly newsletter
On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees