Why being an ‘eco-warrior’ won’t solve the climate crisis
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
About seven years ago, many people seemed to hit a boiling point, and decided that plastic was the new public enemy number one. Everyone turned against plastic straws, and became their own version of a stereotype you could dub the “eco-warrior.”
While both public awareness and a vested interest in fighting climate change are vital, this particular form of environmental advocacy is far too short-sighted.
An “eco-warrior” is someone who does everything within their power to advocate on behalf of the environment, and to fight the climate crisis first-hand. Creating local campaigns for more sustainable transit, or calling for fewer single-use plastics, are both initiatives that an eco-warrior would take up, ideally.
However, in the present day, the so-called eco-warriors are more concerned with bringing their reusable bags to the grocery store, their bamboo cutlery for take-out, and a Nalgene water bottle everywhere they go. This is where the “environmentalism” of eco-warriors becomes problematic — at the end of the day, they are still individualistically-minded solutions.
One of the promoted ways to be an eco-warrior is to “offset your carbon footprint.” At 14, I was told to calculate my carbon footprint. I entered all sorts of information about my daily habits into digital trackers: transit use, food waste, and the like. Immediately, I was awash with guilt, and thought I was a terrible person because I wasn’t able to grow all my own food.
A multinational oil and gas company based out of London, BP p.l.c, campaigned for the concept of an individual carbon footprint, which was then adopted by fellow fossil fuel corporations. While individuals ought to be conscious of their own contributions to the climate crisis, the concept of an individual carbon footprint ignores the fact that large companies, such as BP p.l.c, have annual carbon dioxide emissions of over 322 million metric tons. BP is also responsible for the largest marine oil spill in recorded history.
This shift is detrimental, as it shoves both the responsibilities and consequences of the climate crisis back on the individuals, thereby letting the corporations continue their dirty work while ordinary citizens rush to use public transit and make their own cleaning products.
Big oil and gas companies, such as BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, have knowingly committed crimes against the environment since around the 1960s, when their own research revealed that the excessive burning of fossil fuels was likely to have “measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate.”
While lawsuits and public outrage have followed as their decades-long crimes have come to light, there has yet to be full retaliation from either the public or our governments.
According to a 2023 study, only 36 fossil fuel companies are responsible for over half of world-heating carbon emissions. This is what the eco-warriors need to be focusing on, rather than plastic straws and cold showers.
While individual and lifestyle changes will inevitably be a part of fighting the climate crisis, there are bigger players, and threats, at stake, which need to be tackled simultaneously.
Keep bringing your reusable grocery bags to the store, but also contact your local representatives and demand that they divest from fossil fuels. Vote on policies with the environment in mind, and protest the expansion of harmful pipelines.
While all of us are complicit in the climate crisis in one way or another, it is clear that some have a more direct, and detrimental, hand in quickening the decay of our planet. As long as you’re not dumping 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean, you’re already doing better than BP.
The eco-warrior idea is not misplaced, but its execution has become far too individualized. To fight the climate crisis, we need an army of eco-warriors, all vying for the same goal, and putting pressure on corporations that do the most harm to our environment.
