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authorJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-06-03 15:50:56 +0100
committerJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-06-03 15:50:56 +0100
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chapter 1: carbon footprinting (minor edits)
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But in reality, consumers are often at the mercy of production decisions. To
borrow Huber's illustration, the villain of the 'carbon footprint' narrative is
-a rich consumer, say, someone who has the AC on all day in their spacious
-suburban house and drives a over-sized diesel SUV to work. But imagine that
-hypothetical rich consumer works in the manager's office of a fertiliser plant,
-where one day he is presented with the option of sourcing low-carbon hydrogen
-from electrolysis of water instead of extracting the hydrogen from coal. He
-decides that the low-carbon alternative is too expensive and will make his
-factory uncompetitive, so sticks with the coal. The carbon emissions of the
+a rich consumer, say, someone who has the air conditioning on all day in their
+spacious suburban house and drives a over-sized diesel SUV to work. But imagine
+that hypothetical rich consumer works in the manager's office of a fertiliser
+plant, where one day he is presented with the option of sourcing low-carbon
+hydrogen from electrolysis of water instead of extracting the hydrogen from
+coal. He decides that the low-carbon alternative is too expensive and will make
+his factory uncompetitive, so sticks with the coal. The carbon emissions of the
factory, which might be equivalent to 100,000 American consumers, are not
-attributed to the manager of the factory, but to the 'carbon footprint' of the
-thousands of consumers eating the food produced at the ultimate end of the
-process, even though they are unlikely to have any power or even knowledge over
-the manager's decisions. 'This person spends eight hours a day managing this
-industrial capitalist enterprise and only perhaps forty minutes commuting to
-work—so why do we only pay attention to the latter?' [@climate-change-class-war,
-p. 16]
+attributed to the manager of the factory, nor even the factory's owners, but to
+the 'carbon footprint' of the thousands of consumers eating the food produced at
+the ultimate end of the process, even though they are unlikely to have any power
+or even knowledge over the manager's decisions. 'This person spends eight hours
+a day managing this industrial capitalist enterprise and only perhaps forty
+minutes commuting to work—so why do we only pay attention to the latter?'
+[@climate-change-class-war, p. 16]
Because they have mis-diagnosed the root causes of the problem, they too often
go on to propose incredible solutions. The worst is simply to cut consumption.