Ep.2: The Carbon Footprint Lie — Grant Ennis on Dark PR & Corporate Disinformation

Grant Ennis — Author of Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Undermines Our Health and the Environment

“We must make the world a better place, not feel as though we are making the world a better place.”

Many of us have spent years — even our whole lives — trying to make the world a better place. We diligently recycle, calculate our carbon footprints, and choose ethically sourced products, believing that our individual actions will add up to create a massive impact.

But what if that entire premise is a lie?

I sat down with Grant Ennis, a public health scholar, author, and veteran of aid work in post and current conflict zones like Iraq and Syria. We discuss his eye-opening book to expose the playbook corporations use to keep us focused on our personal choices while they profit from government-subsidized catastrophes. Grant revealed the shocking truth behind concepts like the “carbon footprint” and why our best intentions are often misdirected, ineffective, and even harmful.

Key Takeaways

The Shocking Origin of the “Carbon Footprint”: Learn how British Petroleum (BP) took a term from obscure academic journals and spent millions popularizing it to shift the blame for global warming onto individuals.

Why Individual Action Backfires: Grant presents evidence showing that the more we focus on individual actions (like reading food labels or “leaning in”), the less likely we are to support the large-scale political policies that create real change.

The 9 Devious Frames of “Dark PR”: Discover the corporate playbook used to protect profitable catastrophes, from “post-denialism” (claiming what’s bad is good for you) to “multifactorialism” (making problems seem too complex to solve).

Aggregate vs. Collective Action: Understand the critical difference between millions of people making small, separate choices and citizens organizing for collective political action — and why only one of them has ever changed the world.

The Politics of Urban Sprawl: Grant connects government-mandated low-density housing to not only more car crashes and pollution but also to the erosion of our ability to organize politically.