Why Your Carbon Footprint Matters

By now we’re certain that you’re all well aware of the concept of your carbon footprint, and how cutting your own emissions is essential in the fight against the Climate Crisis.

However, as people become more proactive in the fight against the Climate Crisis, there can be some debate about the impact that individuals can have versus the role that major emitting corporations play – and that this can even be a deceptive tactic to get the world’s biggest polluters off the hook.

Today we look at the origins of the personal carbon footprint, and discuss why cutting yours is still essential in the face of the Climate Crisis.

Forget The Origins

You may have heard that the very concept of a personal carbon footprint is the creation of Big Oil. Sadly, that’s absolutely true.

BP invented and marketed the idea of an individual carbon footprint in 2004 in order to place greater emphasis for climate action on you and I, as a tactic to distract from major CO2 emitters such as, well, BP.

In 2019 alone, BP produced 415 million tonnes of CO2e – this is just shy of seven times the CO2 equivalent emissions created by the entire nation of Ireland in the same year.

For context, this is the same year that Ireland recorded the third highest greenhouse gas emissions in the EU – so you can see just how harmful BP’s emissions are as a single company.

Even then, it is worth remembering that this is their emissions for just one single year, and that BP are only the sixth biggest CO2 equivalent emitter since 1965 – producing just 57% of the emissions created by Aramco over that period.

This is critical, as those people living in the Global South have historically created the fewest emissions but are most vulnerable to the effects of the Climate Crisis, and do not have the financial supports available to them to mitigate rising sea levels, wildfires and famine.

In fact, it is highly likely that we’ll see as many as 1.2bn people displaced due to the Climate Crisis by 2050.

Yet here in Ireland the average person produces 13.3 tonnes of CO2 per year – which accounts for 55% more emissions than the average person in the EU, and is nearly three times more than the average person on Earth.

As such, if we are to reach our climate targets and keep rising global temperatures below 1.5°C, we will all need to achieve a carbon footprint of no more than 2.5 tonnes, which is known as the Climate Fair Share.

This will require the average Irish person to reduce their emissions by 81%.

See our article How To Calculate Your Carbon Footprint to find out more about opportunities to reduce your own impact on the Climate Crisis.

Ireland’s corporate-friendly tax laws may have had some international scrutiny, but it is time that we as citizens of Ireland make our government take action to close similar loopholes on energy consumption and emissions – both at home and internationally.

A clear model for action is being set out in the Netherlands where, like Ireland, their citizens won a legal proceeding against their government for inaction on emissions goals. More recently, a court in the Hague has also ruled that Shell must cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030.

There is no reason that we cannot take personal climate action to reduce our own carbon footprints and support a just climate transition, while also holding those corporations accountable for the worst ecocide crimes to justice at the same time.

Frankly, this is the only viable way forward given the short amount of time we have available to avert the worst possible outcomes of the Climate Crisis.

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