The weight of climate-guilt

By Mrinalini Keskar, ‘22

Artwork by Mrinalini Keskar, ‘22

On September 20, 2020, New York City’s Metronome digital art installation was reprogrammed to display a countdown of the time left to dramatically cut down carbon emissions before the effects become irreversible. 

Overlooking Union Square’s 14th street, the ‘Climate Clock’ is a daunting sign of what's to come.

“The Climate Clock will remind the world every day just how perilously close we are to the brink,” according to Stephen Ross, a chairman of a company based in Union Square. 

Walking past the overbearing installation could incite many strong emotions - anxiety, defeat, or hope. According to the Climate Clock website, the creators aimed to project that little time is possible for change to be made.

“We must take action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions toward zero as quickly as possible within this critical time window for action,” the site reads. 

But who is ‘we’? 

Shifting the blame of the climate crisis onto consumers is not a recent phenomenon. 

Alex Williamson teaches science at Catlin Gabel School (CGS) and is a former environmental lawyer. He recalls that in one type of scenario, calling to attention harmful practices of corporations, and asking consumers to think critically about what they were buying does work. However, for the biggest contributors of climate change (emittance of fossil fuels), it doesn’t. 

“There are two schools of thought. One of which works pretty effectively, and one that really doesn’t,” he said. “The scenario that is the ideal: dolphin safe tuna.”

Williamson refers to a 1987 story, when a biologist went undercover and found that tuna fishing vessels were catching and killing dolphins in their nets. It was discovered that this was being done on purpose, as more tuna would be found around where dolphins resided. After footage of these practices were released to the public, outrage quickly caused the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to be reauthorized. 

During the two year grace period that was allowed for fishermen to reduce their killing of dolphins, public outrage fueled a “consumer boycott” of tuna.

Thus rose the dolphin-safe tuna. After the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act of 1990, it became unlawful to improperly label tuna as ‘dolphin-safe.’ 

“That was so effective that it essentially drove the non-dolphin safe tuna fishing industry out of business,” Williamson noted. “That was a really good way of putting power in the hands of consumers by conveying important information about products on the label.”

However, for the bulk of issues surrounding climate change, the ‘dolphin-safe tuna’ approach does not scale. 

“It only works because it’s a very very simple message,” Williamson said. “The other paradigm for this, would be the carbon footprint.”

The carbon footprint was developed as the Ecological Footprint, a concept created by two ecological economists to “measure the amount of biologically productive land and sea area an individual, a region, all of humanity, or a human activity that compete for biologically productive space.”

However, the idea of a ‘personal’ carbon footprint was pushed by British Petroleum (BP) in conjunction with marketers Ogilvy & Mather. Through the marketing campaign, BP successfully was able to shift the attention of consumers from the ramifications of the fossil fuel industry to their own everyday actions. 

“The basic idea behind the carbon footprint was not to inform consumers about things they could do to protect the environment,” Williamson said. “Instead, it was a way of shifting responsibility from the oil and gas industry, which has a great deal of power, onto individual consumers, who essentially have no power at all.”

“All it was, was a way for people to feel powerless and guilty about the underlying environmental problem,” he continued.

Williamson went on to say that even if consumers were able to follow all the ‘rules’ of maintaining a low carbon footprint, their impact would be extremely small. 

It should be noted that the carbon footprint and sustainability methods are still important for individuals to implement.

“We’re talking about really really marginal changes, in terms of the overall dynamic. Ultimately, climate change is not going to be solved by individuals recycling more often,” he said.” “You should [practice methods of sustainability], but they are not sufficient.”

In a statistical analysis of global greenhouse gas emissions, author Hannah Ritchie found that energy is the biggest contributor to emissions, taking up 73.2% of the overall chart. More specifically, energy use in industry takes up the biggest portion, being 24.2% of the overall energy. Other factors, ones that individuals often feel a responsibility for (consuming meat, individual transportation, and waste/landfills), take up much smaller sectors. 

“[This problem] requires systemic change. Every one of these efforts that tries to shift responsibility onto the consumer, takes us one step further from the kinds of change that will be needed to actually address the problem,” Williamson concluded.