Corporations, Consumers, and Carbon: Who's at Fault Here?

If consumers are expected to be conscious of their decisions, corporations should be too.

By Joshua Kloss



You know the guilt, and so do I. The guilt that creeps up on each of us when we forget to bring a reusable cup to Starbucks for our morning coffee and have to walk out with a Venti cup of plastic. Or that shame that bubbles in the pits of our stomachs when we recycle a product that, in reality, was designed and destined for a landfill. It’s a hurtful guilt, and a righteous one at the same time. It’s okay to occasionally feel bad about our environmental activism; in fact, it just pushes us to consider ways we can do better. We can all do better to lower our carbon footprint. 

Oh, but, wait! Should we? Carbon footprints were derived from the idea of the “ecological footprint,” a term coined by scientists at the University of British Columbia in the nineties. British Petroleum, or BP, took the concept and ran with it, going so far as to invent a “carbon footprint,” calculator and launch an advertisement campaign in 2003 that encouraged people on the street to calculate their own footprints. It was all a stunt from BP that pushed the narrative that individuals should change their own lifestyles and behaviors in order to combat climate change. 

But I’m here to assure you that, no matter how detrimental you consider the plastic straw in your Dunkin refresher, you are not the one that should feel the weight of environmental doom. Many activists have since criticized BP and other large oil companies for their blatant hypocrisy, as they are responsible for a baffling amount of emissions compared to the average individual. Not to mention they are responsible for billions of dollars worth of damage from the oil spills that happen under their watch and lazy practices. The Exxon-Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon spill were each several billion dollars of damage, and the justice for the individuals and communities affected has since been nothing short of lackluster. Yet, these giant corporations continue to attribute climate change towards individualistic actions, as seen with BP’s carbon footprint craze. Huh.

To highlight the discrepancies between the individual and the corporation, let’s circle back to our greedy, not-so-little and not-so-friend, BP. Alongside other oil giants ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron, BP was listed as one of the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. Going further down that list, we have a cohort of 100 total corporations who have been responsible for a whopping 70% of all global emissions since 1988. Read that however many times you need to until you get scared, and then keep reading until you're furious.

So, maybe one single person shouldn’t feel so bad about using a plastic straw. After all, corporations do everything in their power to maximize their profits. If one argues that corporations are obligated to pay back their shareholders, one could also argue that they owe it to us, as both their consumers and laborers, to invest in a sustainable future. That doesn’t mean solar panels and electric cars by the end of the day tomorrow, but maybe at least a future where the rivers run free of oil-slicked water and we don’t consume a plastic-card worth of microplastics every week (according to a study run by the World Wildlife Fund. But don’t worry, that’s only an approximation!).

You see, it’s one thing that corporations are polluting at such grave amounts, especially when there’s only a handful of them and almost ten billion of us (can’t we share the planet equally?). It’s another thing that they are unfathomably wealthy, and have both the money and power (though the two are just about the same) to enact action. To put it at its simplest, if corporations have the right to mutilate our planet in their reckless pursuit of capital, they could at least use some of that capital they accrue to fix what they’ve caused. And trust me, they have caused a lot.

Many corporations are actually seeing record-breaking profits, yet they are still hungry for more. Recently in East Palestine, Ohio, a train run by the railroad company Norfolk Southern derailed. 20 of the 51 cars that crashed were carrying hazardous materials, and people were forced to evacuate their homes only to return later to rivers that run with an oily sheen on the surface, their pets and livestock dropped dead, and little-to-no cleanup from the local and federal government, though as of recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has gotten involved. During the Trump administration, Norfolk Southern lobbied for legislation that laid back requirements for freight trains carrying hazardous materials. It effectively allowed Norfolk to avoid installing electronically-controlled pneumatic brakes on trains that carry materials of mass destruction. Who knows how things would have played out had the train that derailed been equipped with faster, more efficient brake systems. Or if Norfolk Southern remained up-to-date on their wheel bearing temperature sensors, which could have reportedly helped the derailment situation in East Palestine in the first place.

Why did the CEO of Norfolk Southern, whose salary was $4.2 million as of 2021, lobby against stricter regulations? Because those cost money, and money that’s going into the pockets of corporations hardly ever finds its way out. After all, Norfolk Southern, like so many other corporations, are beholden to their wall street investors and shareholders, which cause them to act in ways that avoid spending (so, no strict regulations) and that maximize revenue.

Here’s another thing to sit on: if you made about 19 million dollars a year since the year zero (so, $20,000,000 x 2023 years) you still would not have made as many profits as Shell did in the year 2022 alone. To be clear: I cannot even imagine what $20 million looks like in cash. The fact that Shell has made that amount of money (about $40 billion, to be exact) in one fiscal year alone is absolutely mind-boggling. That was the highest salary on record for them, nearly doubling since the year prior, highlighting the fact that corporations continue to see record breaking profits. And yet, these companies are the same ones who resist even paying to clean up the oil they spill into our oceans and onto our coastlines. 

To be clear, it is wonderful that people care about the environment. I myself have been vegan since my sophomore year of highschool to help mitigate my own “carbon footprint,” and I will always applaud my friends and family that also make conscious decisions in order to live more sustainably. But, I’ll ask you this: how much money do you make a year? Anywhere close to $40 billion, or $20 million? I didn’t think so. Obviously, you’re not the one who should be paying to clean up the planet; we’re all living in a world where we must buy products from the same corporations that are walking all over our planet. 

But, still, maybe the monthly Shein hauls that border in the hundreds of dollars are a bit ridiculous? Because, after all, we’re not helpless. Nor are we powerless. As consumers in a crumbling capitalist country, we speak most loudly with what’s in our bank accounts. We can choose to spend money at thrift stores instead of supporting companies that charge upwards of $40 for a graphic tee yet still outsource their labor to foreign countries where they can source sweatshop labor from (looking at you, Urban Outfitters… and a handful of other clothing brands). 

Ultimately, environmental justice intersects with every other section of activism. That’s why we have terms like environmental justice: because so often of the time, the act of polluting is not a victimless one. The communities such as Mossville that were forced out by Sasol’s petrochemical plants in Louisiana's strip of Cancer Alley still don’t have justice, for example, and neither do the people of East Palestine so far. The fight for sustainability is one against capitalism. If at one point this statement provoked you, I hope that after reading this article, you find it to be old news.

Sources:

Wake Mag