European researchers said Thursday that the the start of June saw global surface air temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. That is the limit governments said they would try to limit global warming to at a 2015 summit in Paris.
Aaaaaand you’ve succumbed to corporate propaganda. Carbon footprint is a term coined by BP marketing to shift blame to individuals instead of corporations so nothing would be done about it.
We need the GOVERNMENTS of the world to start drastically reducing corporate carbon footprints. Which will then force peoples’ footprints down when the cheap high-carbon goods and services are no longer available.
A huge portion of American carbon usage is personal transportation. The government can do many things to lower its carbon footprint but your life will look significantly different. Local governments are largely responsible for determining what citizens’ primary means of transportation is and that’s where people actually do have a lot of influence.
I’m not American so I already pay twice as much for fuel as Americans do. Something the US government should do, too. Gas should be at least $10/gallon. Makes you consider other forms of transit when travelling locally at least.
Yes, exactly. This is true. Gasoline is extremely subsidized in the US and even just ending those subsidies would encourage people to do something other than drive. Using that money to expand public transit options would be even better. Americans drive literally everywhere. There is no walking anywhere at all. We get very, very little physical activity and use a tremendous amount of fossil fuels and energy to get from Point A to Point B, on top of buying enormous gas guzzling SUVs.
Or we could just do both - while corporations are the largest polluters and need to be regulated, individual measures such as switching to a plant based diet are still useful.
0.1% of people switching to a plant based diet changes what, 0.00001% of global emissions?
It’s pointless. People don’t make changes on a large scale voluntarily. That’s the exact reason the carbon footprint meme exists. Government regulations need to block corporations from ever offering the goods and services that pollute so much, at such good prices that they have now. A global carbon tax is basically the only way to go.