Who’s To Blame For Climate Change?
Written by: Abigail Galvez
20 years ago Smash Mouth warned us about climate change with the release of “All Star,” with prophetic lines such as “My world's on fire, how about yours?” and “The water's getting warm so you might as well swim.”
So, headlines about the Australian fire and the Earth’s global temperature aren’t as shocking.
It’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole of depressing articles on the reality of climate change and the idea that we’ve brought this upon ourselves. Climate change is usually painted as something you and I have created and can fix, but this is far from the truth.
Big corporations, along with celebrities, have painted themselves as advocates for climate change by constantly promoting the need to incite urgency and change from the average person. Meanwhile, they are some of the world’s biggest polluters. Their PR teams need serious pay raises because companies such as Exxon and Shell have kept their image clean from the damage they’ve caused while making us feel guilty.
Consider, only 100 companies are the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to The Carbon Majors Database Report of 2017.
Companies such as PepsiCo and Nestle are aware of the pollution they’ve caused. For example, as pressure has been placed on them they have released climate change policies they claim to abide by. However, with new reports constantly being released their models would need to be drastically changed in order for them to truly help with a situation they’ve caused.
These companies made sure that their image and name is as fairly dissociated with the reality of the Earth’s condition and instead keep us busy with city ordinances on reusable bags.
I’m sorry VSCO girls, but throwing out plastic straws won’t save the turtles. Nothing we do could possibly reverse the ticking time bomb that’s been released by companies and celebrities.
That’s an issue we have the power to change. Through social and political pressure we can bring companies such as Coca-Cola to start cleaning up their mess. They only profit off of us if we let them. Stop letting them scam you into believing it’s not their fault. They’ve done an impressive job of keeping themselves blameless from their dirty work, but it’s time to redirect accountability towards the true culprits.