Do you remember where you first heard the term “carbon footprint”? Neither do I. For many of us, the term was slipped into our subconscious by an advertising campaign that ran for two years from 2004 and was funded by oil giant BP. “What on earth is a carbon footprint?” read one ad, emblazoned with the company’s green-and-yellow sunflower logo. “Every person in the world has one.”
One might wonder about the purpose of that expensive campaign. Public-spiritedness? A straightforward attempt to nurture a greener image? Neither, according to prominent US climate scientist Michael E Mann, who sees the adverts as part of a deflection effort “aimed at shifting responsibility from corporations to individuals”. In his 2021 book The New Climate War, he accuses corporate messaging of helping to drive “a fixation on voluntary action”, undermining the push for tough new regulations and state policies, from carbon pricing to tighter restrictions on industrial emissions, that could make a real difference.
I was reminded of Mann’s warning during a BBC debate last month between UK prime ministerial contenders Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The host spurned the opportunity to grill them on their proposals to deal with the climate crisis, instead asking them: “What three things should people change in their lives to help tackle climate change faster?”