How the term and concept “carbon footprint” came about and the oil company behind it.

By Marica Micallef

The Elite and their puppets want you to believe that you are creating carbon, shifting our world into one which has become obsessed with the idea of reducing carbon of which the news, the media, the governments, and companies continuously bombard you.

Throughout all this saga, they try to make you feel guilty because you use your car, you do not plant enough trees, and so forth. But, isn’t it all a scam which was created by some of the world’s most powerful companies to make truckloads of money?

Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. As one dives deeper in the whole scam, one finds oneself face to face with global deception, lobbying and loophole exploitation, all hidden behind a facade of bullshit and lies.

How did the concept and name “carbon footprint” come to be? “Carbon footprint” was derived from the ecological footprint concept, which was developed by the two researchers William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel in the 1990s at the University of British Columbia.

Back then it was sold to you as “Our Ecological Footprint” and how we should reduce human impact on the earth but it was rarely talked about outside the academic sphere:

This term stuck for nearly a decade without being paid much attention to until 2004, when this ecological footprint was rebranded as carbon footprint, bringing this concept of carbon into the minds of millions and became a radical change from being something that was talked about by the fringe of society. Who was the cause behind such a rapid change? Was it truly someone who really cared about the environment? Nope.

It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for British Petroleum (BP). As Mark Kaufman wrote:

“British Petroleum, the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, with 18,700 gas and service stations worldwide, hired the public relations professionals Ogilvy & Mather to promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals. It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life – going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling – is largely responsible for heating the globe.”

The main reason to defeat the fossil fuel corporations is that their product is destroying the planet, but their insidious propaganda, from spreading climate-change denial to pushing this climate footprint business, makes this goal even more worthwhile.

BP is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England in which one finds four top shareholders which happened to be American and these are: State Street (an American financial services and bank holding company), BlackRock (an American multi-national investment company), Dimensional Fund Advisors (an American private investment firm), and Fisher Investments (an American independent money management firm). Another top shareholder is Menora Mivtachim, an Israeli insurance company that is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. BP allows U.S. investors to purchase its American Depositary Shares (ADS) on major stock exchanges.

BP is one of the biggest oil and gas producer in the world. It is the same company which is responsible for the second largest oil spill in the history of marine oil drilling operations, when on 20th April 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, operating in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded and sank.

Up till today, this explosion is still affecting our ocean and the marine life:

Sensing that hate will come its way when it started noticing that the world started being more concerned about the environment, BP launched a worldwide campaign for the sake of educating people on their new term “carbon footprint”.

This push was what caused your individual carbon footprint to spread worldwide making you feel conscious and guilty about your daily choices which are damaging the planet. BP had also released the first carbon calculator and boasted about the fact that it was the first oil company to take actions against global warming. Instead of blaming themselves and their greed, these oil companies blame you.

But are they doing their part as well? They can’t fake it, no? Well, instead of doing what they preach and what they expect out of you, they spent 250 million dollars to hire the global marketing agency called Ogilvy & Mather which is an agency that runs successful global marketing public relations campaigns, working with big companies. The campaign which BP and Ogilvy & Mather ran is known as the Helios campaign, designed to position the company as environmental friendly to convince you that it was doing its part.

BP started its campaign on solar energy when at the end, it was spending more money on advertising its solar projects than it did on developing these same projects. According to lawyer at ClientEarth, Sophie Marjanac:

“BP is spending millions on an advertising campaign to give the impression that it’s racing to renewables, that its gas is cleaner, and that it is part of the climate solution.”

“This is a smokescreen. While BP’s advertising focuses on clean energy, in reality, more than 96% of the company’s annual capital expenditure is on oil and gas. According to its own figures, BP is spending less than £4 in every £100 on low-carbon investments each year. The rest is fuelling the climate crisis.”

And while you are being asked to bike to work, to use your car less, to change your lights at home to LED, to eat insects and lab-grown meat, BP continues with its oil exploration and with more investment so that its revenue would continue to grow. And so do its shareholders.

While you think you are lowering your carbon footprint, BP is spewing millions more metric tons of emissions that are cancelling out your efforts.