Big Polluters Want You to Think You Can Solve Climate Change

EnergyAustralia is one of the largest energy retailers in Australia and the country’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter. On a per-capita basis, Australians contribute more to climate change than the citizens of any other developed nation (yes, even Americans), and EnergyAustralia is a big reason why.

So, in a seemingly good-faith attempt to help its customers reduce their carbon footprint, the company offered them the option of “going neutral.” When customers opted into this free program, EnergyAustralia pledged to purchase a commensurate amount of carbon credits to offset the emissions from their energy use.

“Go Neutral” came to an abrupt end in 2023, however, doomed by lawsuits alleging that this feel-good program was just that and nothing more. EnergyAustralia relied almost entirely on ‘avoidance’ credits – essentially paying someone else to not pollute – the group Parents for Climate alleged. 

“Paying someone else to avoid generating emissions does not undo the impact of the emissions generated from ‘Go Neutral’ energy,” the organization claimed in its suit. “This is because avoidance credits do not involve removing any CO2 from the atmosphere.”

In truth, EnergyAustralia’s “Go Neutral” was a textbook example of a common tactic employed by big polluters: shift the onus of reducing carbon emissions on to consumers. Marketers call it “consumer responsibilization.” Big polluters want you to think you can solve climate change on your own, so that way you’ll stop bugging them to make the costly, wholesale changes that actually make a difference.

In an analysis published in November, Tom van Laer, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Sydney, found this sort of marketing ploy strewn across the websites of dozens of major players in the Australian energy market. 

“If consumers buy the right car, switch off their appliances, use off-peak hot water, install solar panels – you name it – then they can play a key role in saving the planet,” he said. 

While these efforts might slash a few bucks off your energy bills and earn you some “Net Zero Hero” street cred, none will appreciably slow the planet’s warming. 

Stateside, large, polluting American companies take a decidedly consumerist approach to shifting responsibility for climate change. The classic grift is offering pricey, “eco-friendly” products. Consumers generally want to be stewards of the environment, and feel good when doing so. Companies are eager to sell them those warm, tingly feelings via higher-margin products that ultimately do little to solve climate change in another failed politics through consumerism approach so beloved in the United States.

Duke Energy employs another method common to electrical utilities in the U.S. The power company encourages customers to “lower your carbon footprint” by purchasing subsidized electric HVAC systems, yet in 2023, only 1.8 percent of their own energy production came from renewables (though another 28.4 percent did come from emissions-free nuclear power). Duke Energy simply just wants to sell more of their fossil-fueled electricity. 

Britain’s BP initially led the consumer responsibilization charge for climate change. In the early 2000s, before the fossil fuel company spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, a marketing firm on its behalf came up with the “carbon footprint,” the measure of an individual’s greenhouse gas emissions. One could reduce it by – for example – using less energy to heat or cool their home, avoiding plane travel, eating less meat, recycling, composting, and eschewing plastic bags. It was an effort that supposedly anyone could join and make an impact doing.

But here’s the thing: if fossil fuels remain our primary source of energy, reducing one’s individual carbon footprint is pointless in the aggregate. The emissions inherent to the functioning of global civilization are already unacceptably high. No average person, through energy stinginess, can change that.  

“Even a homeless person living in a fossil fuel powered society has an unsustainably high carbon footprint,” Dr. Benjamin Franta, a Senior Research Fellow in Climate Litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and the founding head of the Climate Litigation Lab, said several years ago. “As long as fossil fuels are the basis for the energy system, you could never have a sustainable carbon footprint. You simply can’t do it.”

To stop climate change, the choice isn’t between a gas-powered or electric car, a plastic or reusable bag, or checking a box to “go neutral” or not. It’s between decarbonizing on a grand scale through policy action or not. Since the latter choice sentences much of humanity to life in a burning, flooded, or heat-stricken hellscape, that should be an easy choice.