The Messy Truth About Carbon Footprints
Posted on AllSides September 11th, 2021
From The Left
ANALYSIS
How much attention should each of us be paying to our individual carbon footprint? That question is the subject of a contentious debate that’s been raging in climate circles for quite some time.
In one camp stand folks like author Rebecca Solnit, whose recent op-ed for the Guardian argued that Big Oil invented carbon footprints as a deliberate attempt to “blame us for their greed.” The goal, she wrote, was to use relatively ineffectual calls for voluntary abstinence to distract the public from demanding systems-level interventions—like new taxes or the phasing out of gas-powered cars—that...