Debatable is a column written by the Otago University Debating Society. The Debating Society welcomes new members and meets at the Business School every Tuesday at 6pm.
For
Let’s face it: the UN’s climate conferences are infamously ineffective, corporations tend to dislike any change that might mean less moola, and our new government seems awfully keen on deep-sea oil drilling. It’s unlikely that major emitters are going to see the moral error of their ways and decide to flip their business models upside down to save the planet – at least not without a lot of legal and economic wrangling, which takes a lot of time that we don’t have.
It’s time to take matters into our own hands, because we as individuals can do a lot to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being let loose in the atmosphere on our behalf. Cast a critical eye over your everyday life – do you really need to fly to Melbourne for that concert? Is the electric massager you were influenced into buying off Temu going to revolutionise your life? Can you only get there by car, or is this a chance to sit back, relax, and enjoy Dunedin’s (mostly) decent public transport? And although many of us enjoy making fun of vegetarians, it’s only fair to give those iron-deficient baddies credit where it’s due. Going veggo can decrease your carbon footprint by over 50%. Our lives in the Western world are comparatively lavish (yes, even in North D), and we are far from innocent when it comes to unnecessary carbon emissions.
Individual actions add up, too. As consumers, we control the market, and while one person switching from petrol to an electric car won’t do much, 100, or 1,000, or 100,000 will – signalling to companies that the market for green transport is heating up. And, if nothing else, reducing our personal impact can make us feel a little better about the world. With such an ever-present and terrifying crisis, it genuinely helps to feel like you’re doing something to help. It may not be a lot, but it’s something.
If you believe that politicians and corporations should be working to lower their carbon footprints, then you may as well do the same, no matter the size of your effect. When we take personal responsibility for our climate-negative actions, we feel a deeper connection to our values (saving the earth). And who knows? Maybe you can inspire the people around you to take similar steps. A ripple of movement starts with just one drop. Just a thought.
Against
In a stuffy boardroom in 2004, BP’s marketing team struck (metaphorical) liquid gold: the concept of the ‘carbon footprint’. This genius ploy shifted the blame for climate change onto consumers, whilst scrutiny of the companies pumping out thousands of tonnes of gas on the daily remained conveniently absent.
To put things into perspective, in 2022 BP produced twenty-one million two hundred and fifty thousand times more CO2 than the average Kiwi. That number is far too big to even comprehend. The same goes for billionaires – the amount that some of the richest people emit in a single year would take a regular person about 1,500 years to match. These guys are the real drivers of climate change, and no amount of meat-free or mindful Mondays will turn that around. That’s not to say that you should start going on international holidays every mid-sem break or burn straight coal to heat your flat in winter, but unfortunately, we can’t solve climate change alone.
Shifting the blame onto individuals only makes us feel guilty for buying the occasional single-use Pump bottle, while allowing corporations to get away with pumping millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Why should we bear the burden of fixing climate change by sorting our recycling while these huge organisations get a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Companies prioritise profits over people’s health at every turn, and they’re not showing signs of changing anytime soon. At the end of the day, what we need is a whole economic system makeover, and we need it ASAP.
So yeah, we’re obviously in a pretty bad situation. That’s not a reason to give up, though; there’s plenty we can do to push companies and governments in the right direction. Law students – take an environmental law paper, or go sue a petrol company. Studying Pol Sci? Run for office and become the BP CEO’s worst nightmare. BCom students – now’s your time to flex those entrepreneurial skills on the green market. Genetics majors – could you engineer some low carbon footprint cows or something? And on a more accessible level, we can all help out by advocating, turning up to protests, signing petitions, and keeping the future of our planet in mind when voting in local and national elections.