carbon footprint

Popularized by a 2005 advertising campaign for fossil-fuel company BP in order to shift blame for climate change onto individual consumers. Modelled after the ecological footprint concept developed in the 1990s.

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carbon footprint (plural carbon footprints)

1. A measure of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a person, organization or state in a given time.

   Synonym: carbon cost

   Coordinate term: ecological footprint

   • 1994, Peter Simmons, Petrol to Gas: A Fully Illustrated Guide to Complete D.I.Y.Conversion for the Motorist, Password Publishing, page 14:

     House insulation is another way of reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint, as well as double glazing and draught-proofing.

   • 2018, Lena Dominelli, editor, The Routledge Handbook of Green Social Work‎, Routledge, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 134:

     Usage of local products has boosted the income of local farmers, created more work opportunities and lowered carbon footprints. Previously, business owners in Jiasian competed with each other and fought over business opportunities.

   • 2020 May 6, Philip Haigh, “Just one more stop on the long journey to HS2 fulfillment [sic]”, in Rail, page 65:

     Also true is that building HS2 will produce considerable carbon emissions. However, those emissions pale into insignificance if this claim from the business case is true: "To put HS2's carbon footprint in perspective, the estimated total carbon emissions from both building and operating Phase 1 for a full 120 years produces the same amount of carbon as just one month of the UK's road network."

   • 2021 August 23, Rebecca Solnit, “Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook”, in The Guardian‎:

     But the oil companies would like you to think that’s how it works. It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for BP.

• carbon emissions trading
• digital footprint