Why your 'Carbon Footprint' Is A Lie | Climate Town
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in discussions of carbon footprints and corporate greenwashing, for the claim that the concept came from BP marketing.
What it is
Climate Town argues that the personal carbon footprint idea shifts blame to individuals and traces it to oil company marketing, urging collective and political action.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Maarten88 · 2026-03 · on “Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case”
You know the carbon footprint concept was literally created by BP marketing, to place the blame for climate change on society, and distract from all the evil stuff they did to promote more fossil fuel consumption and sabotage climate science. The Climate Town channel on Youtube has lots of video's on this, such as this one: [this video]
Cites kleer001 · 2022-04 · on “Ask HN: Shouldn't we be turning an eye to power consumption?”
> Maybe consider your carbon footprint when performing that next full code compile? Why "Carbon footprint" is a lie. [LINK] [this video] [LINK] That said being efficient is not a bad idea. There is a market for chips with less power consumption. A 250GB seasonal DL is kinda wasteful. But the solution to climate change (and it's not a crisis) is not atoning for our eco-sins. That's a misapplication of the JudeoChristian myth of sin/salvation.
Cites baxuz · 2022-07 · on “Launch HN: Bend (YC S22) – Automatically measure your company's carbon footprint”
Carbon footprints are a scam: [this video] Carbon offsets are a scam: [LINK] Hearing people talk about these give me the same vibes as techbros talking about stocks and crypto.
Cites mptest · 2023-08 · on “Gov. Newsom declares state of emergency for southern California”
>Given all those rhetorical shaming of individuals to consume less, it's illuminating to actually look at the data and see what's the actual the effect even if you could literally force (instead of shaming) everyone to live that lifestyle. Yeah, almost like the entire notion of a "carbon footprint" was a piece of propaganda produced by a literal oil company[0] to move the blame of polluting the planet from the corporations that knowingly did it, to earnest and empathetic individuals like the original person I replied to, causing them to abstain from vacation (and more) for negligible benefit while the corporations continue to pollute with impunity. [0] [this video]