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Consumer Perception: Companies, Climate Change & Blame

By William Park May 5, 2022

Source: BBC

Photo / Image Source: Unsplash, Charles Forerunner


Businesses shape how we talk about climate change, and sometimes this can stop us from paying attention to their actions.


Rather than addressing the root cause of America's litter problem – the fact that there was much more disposable packaging after World War Two – their advertising campaigns focused on the bad behaviour of some consumers, he says. "Images and feelings were being manipulated by corporations to put the onus on the individual."

Similar criticisms have been levelled at terms like "carbon footprints" – which was first coined in a 2005 TV advert from BP. The advert appears to show members of the public being stopped in the street and asked what is "their carbon footprint". Most look a bit perplexed. BP explains that the carbon footprint is "the amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to your daily activities – from washing a load of laundry to driving a carload of kids to school". The question of who is responsible for climate change is incredibly complicated, explains my colleague Jocelyn Timperley in an article for BBC Future's Climate Emotions series. Is it the companies who supply goods and services or the consumers who create the demand?

On the one hand, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions in the past two decades can be attributed to 100 fossil fuel producers, according to a report from the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). So their role is clearly important. But rich, Western consumers also contribute a disproportionate amount of emissions through the choices they make. Another assessment, co-authored by Diana Ivanova, a research fellow specialising in household consumption from the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds in the UK, suggests households contribute more than 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It depends on whom you hold responsible for Scope 3 emissions, which are "indirect" emissions resulting from using goods and services, for example.



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