This reminds me of the infant formula feeding propaganda - "breast is best"? invented by formula manufacturers - not as it is widely attributed to, the breastfeeding advocates. It's insidious and nasty. Question everything.
Thanks for this eye opener. The Mashable article is a good reminder of how insidiously and ubiquitously the fossil fuel industry distorts useful concepts. However, it's a bit misleading. BP may have originated the "carbon footprint" propaganda, but they can hardly be said to have invented the concept. It goes back to the "ecological footprint," which was conceived much more broadly than as a tool for individuals. As I recall from my first encounter with it in the 1990s, the inventors described it mainly in terms of cities, showing that a city's impacts are much larger than the land on which it sits or even the downwind/downstream areas it pollutes. Mathis Wackernagel and the Global Footprint Network still emphasize nations and communities in their ongoing work to foster this kind of systems thinking: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/
This reminds me of the infant formula feeding propaganda - "breast is best"? invented by formula manufacturers - not as it is widely attributed to, the breastfeeding advocates. It's insidious and nasty. Question everything.
Thanks for this eye opener. The Mashable article is a good reminder of how insidiously and ubiquitously the fossil fuel industry distorts useful concepts. However, it's a bit misleading. BP may have originated the "carbon footprint" propaganda, but they can hardly be said to have invented the concept. It goes back to the "ecological footprint," which was conceived much more broadly than as a tool for individuals. As I recall from my first encounter with it in the 1990s, the inventors described it mainly in terms of cities, showing that a city's impacts are much larger than the land on which it sits or even the downwind/downstream areas it pollutes. Mathis Wackernagel and the Global Footprint Network still emphasize nations and communities in their ongoing work to foster this kind of systems thinking: https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/