00:00With the arrival of the new year, you may have resolved to do your part to help the environment.
00:04Here are a few actions you can take, as well as some larger perspective to keep in mind.
00:09The BBC recommends eating a plant-based diet,
00:11as the livestock used for meat release a large amount of greenhouse gases.
00:15America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
00:18recommends using long-lasting, energy-efficient light bulbs,
00:21and, of course, turning out the lights when you leave a room.
00:24And members of the Sierra Club Toyabe chapter suggest
00:27divesting your own investments from institutions involved with fossil fuels.
00:31Some of those members also recommend buying an electric vehicle.
00:35But while transitioning to EVs may be important in the long run,
00:38the Brookings Institution says their current impact in the U.S. may be limited,
00:42as our electrical infrastructure is itself largely fueled by natural gas and coal.
00:46And this illustrates how the impact of individual environmental action can be limited, or even misleading.
00:52In 2021, Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard
00:55published a study in which they argued that, as they said in a Los Angeles Times op-ed,
01:00oil company ExxonMobil uses rhetoric aimed at shifting responsibility for climate change
01:05away from itself and onto consumers.
01:07In fact, the very phrase, carbon footprint, was invented by another oil company, BP,
01:13as part of a 2004 PR campaign.
01:15And an NPR-slash-PBS frontline investigation in 2020 found that the plastics industry
01:21promoted recycling and downplayed the practice's difficulties
01:24as a way of suppressing concerns about their own product.
01:27Of course, individual environmental action can make a difference,
01:30but it won't be a substitute for a larger change at the social level.
