I have a connection on LinkedIn who works in a leadership position in Microsoft who had recently written a post about why she doesn't send "thank you" email because she wants to save the world by reducing their carbon footprint by reducing the number of emails sent. I am a liberal at heart but I really wanted to comment "Shut up, please shut up, I am begging you to shut up." I want to say the same to you.
It seems odd to treat the suggestion that unnecessary emails cause excessive carbon emisions and the suggestion that unnecessary air travel causes excessive carbon emissions as the same or similar.
I think the implication is that on an individual level neither matters, and that suggesting, on social media, people stop traveling to prevent climate change is both ridiculous and harmful to anyone working to actually improve carbon emissions.
Yeah good intentions do often backfire (road to hell...), and this is one of the ways. Shaming folks for stuff they do normally when alternative is simply stop seeing parents and grandparents (for us this is currently way more carbon than all vacations combined). People simply shut off and go on to have a life, there is only so much existential dread you can pour on civilization before it becomes next norm, facts be damned.
I have 2 small kids, life is often a daily struggle in one way or another, I couldn't care less about current carbon footprint just like I don't care about another non-urgent bottom 500 priority stuff. Vote in politicians that will take care of that instead of focusing on smooth corporate profits if you want to send positive message and change, and motivate folks to do the same to increase impact.
> I couldn't care less about current carbon footprint just like I don't care about another non-urgent bottom 500 priority stuff.
That’s the thing: these narcissists on LinkedIn don’t care about their “carbon footprint” either. It’s all virtue signaling performance act targeting the Very Concerned people who eat these platitudes up. That’s what makes these statements so irritating.
I certainly do care about my carbon footprint and travel by train / bike when I can. I do take the plane when I need to and of course am not telling people to stop visiting family. I was asking to at least consider carbon footprint when making leisure world travel decisions. The ton of CO2 you release on a london-new York is 100% yours.
