• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "carbon footprint" was first used in a BBC vegetarian food magazine in 1999, though the broader concept of "environmental footprint" had been used since at least 1979.[77] The idea of a personal carbon footprint was popularized by a large advertising campaign of the fossil fuel company BP in 2005, designed by Ogilvy.[12][78] It instructed people to calculate their personal footprints and provided ways for people to "go on a low-carbon diet".[79][80] This strategy, also employed by other major fossil fuel companies, is now being criticized for trying to shift the blame for negative consequences of those industries onto individual choices.[12][81] Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University have argued that concepts such as carbon footprints "hamstring us, and they put blinders on us, to the systemic nature of the climate crisis and the importance of taking collective action to address the problem".[82][83]