Iâve heard people say that the idea of an individualâs âcarbon footprintâ has actually harmed the cause of climate activists because it takes the emphasis onto personal behavior and off of policy change. Considering how amazingly successful policy advocacy for animal welfare can be, I worry that âwelfare footprintâ could be a step in the wrong direction.
Yes, this is a good pointâperhaps you could speak of âthe dairy industryâs welfare footprintâ if you sought to avoid this.
Though I guess people could only support policy change that tried to, for example, reduce flying in favour of travel by train, if they are first aware of the differences in emissions (254g vs 6g per km apparently), rather than just being aware that both release some emissionsâand perhaps the idea of carbon footprints helped popularise that there are such big differences (?) But maybe thereâs something about the term âfootprintâ which is too closely tied to individual behaviour, and a better term could be found.
Iâve heard people say that the idea of an individualâs âcarbon footprintâ has actually harmed the cause of climate activists because it takes the emphasis onto personal behavior and off of policy change. Considering how amazingly successful policy advocacy for animal welfare can be, I worry that âwelfare footprintâ could be a step in the wrong direction.
Yes, this is a good pointâperhaps you could speak of âthe dairy industryâs welfare footprintâ if you sought to avoid this.
Though I guess people could only support policy change that tried to, for example, reduce flying in favour of travel by train, if they are first aware of the differences in emissions (254g vs 6g per km apparently), rather than just being aware that both release some emissionsâand perhaps the idea of carbon footprints helped popularise that there are such big differences (?)
But maybe thereâs something about the term âfootprintâ which is too closely tied to individual behaviour, and a better term could be found.