When it comes to who’s harming the climate, it’s also been popular to focus on individual contributions. The fossil fuel industry likes the narrative of personal responsibility as a way to keep us scrutinizing ourselves and one another, rather than them. They’ve promoted the concept of climate footprints as a way to keep the focus on us and not them, and it’s worked. Usually, if I ask people what they’re doing about the climate emergency, most will talk about what they’re not consuming or doing—but these will never add up to the speed and scale of change needed to change the system.
