A New, Darker Way to Measure Your Climate Impact

Guilt has always been a prime weapon in the climate cult’s arsenal when it comes to coaxing the gullible into acting in ways that the cult finds “climate friendly.” In the past, the carbon footprint was the climate alarmists’ main weapon in measuring this guilt, with the goal of creating a smaller footprint by purchasing solar panels and electric vehicles.

Unfortunately for the cult, many found the notion of a climate footprint off-putting, in that it didn’t accurately portray an individual’s true impact on the climate and was, allegedly, given to us by a fossil fuel company. Instead of attacking big oil and fossil fuel interests, it focused on the individual and what one can personally do to heal the planet of its supposed carbon infection.

Now comes a new way to measure the nefarious impacts individuals have on the climate — the climate shadow. “Climate shadow” is a term coined by Oregon-based climate journalist Emma Pattee.

Pattee uses the example of a person who flies weekly for work to explain her concept. The weekly flyer is compared to a person who walks to work and lives in a small apartment. Air travel, of course, is one of the climate cult’s main concerns, since it supposedly releases more planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The weekly flyer is obviously the bigger climate villain, right? Not necessarily if you buy into Pattee’s reasoning.

“Flying is notoriously awful, emissions-wise, and when you compare a weekly flight to the energy use of a small home and the emissions of a daily walking commute, the outcome is obvious,” Pattee explained.

Then comes the twist: “The weekly flier is a climate scientist who travels around the world teaching about the dangers of climate change. The second person works for a marketing agency, making ads like this for an oil company. So who is contributing more to the climate emergency, really?”

In Pattee’s world, the concept of a carbon footprint is outdated, invented by big oil, and ignores the fact that many simply lack the wherewithal to make more responsible climate choices. The notion of a climate shadow, which follows you wherever you go, is more comfortable.

“Think of your climate shadow as a dark shape stretching out behind you,” Pattee wrote in 2021. “Everywhere you go, it goes too, tallying not just your air conditioning use and the gas mileage of your car, but also how you vote, how many children you choose to have, where you work, how you invest your money, how much you talk about climate change, and whether your words amplify urgency, apathy, or denial.” (Emphasis added.)

Carbon footprints, according to Pattee, are imperfect and unfair measures of an individual’s commitment to climate action.

“What became clear to me is that so much of our carbon footprint is baked in by forces outside of our control,” she said in National Geographic. “We don’t really control how our cities are laid out; we don’t control public transportation. We don’t even control what country we’re born into.”

Rather than simply maintaining a scorecard of what an individual does for the climate in their workaday life (i.e., do they take mass transit, do they utilize solar panels, etc.), the climate shadow is a more “holistic approach,” extending to a person’s choice of employment, the way they vote, and whether they properly hate the right people.

“I meet people who are deep in rage against corporations. Okay, cool. I will meet people who are switching out their lightbulbs — also cool,” Pattee said. “I’m not worried about them butting heads, because I don’t see any of these groups as separate. I just see them all as people in different phases of a larger reckoning. But isn’t it a beautiful thing that your impact could be greater than you could imagine?”

In other words, Pattee’s idea of a climate shadow is a shot across the bow of those who point out climate hypocrisy. Is John Kerry unnecessarily flying around the globe, emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases? He’s excused because he’s promoting the cause. Is Leonardo DiCaprio being hypocritical when he harangues world leaders about climate change but continues to fly in private jets? Maybe, but he can be forgiven because he’s promoting the cause.

In the climate-change movement, one’s actions are far less important than their perceived commitment to the cult.