From ChatGPT to hamburgers, reject climate individualism – The Daily Princetonian
I don’t eat hamburgers — but if I did, this newspaper would have me feeling very guilty about doing so recently.
On Oct. 29, Guest Contributor Jack Thompson wrote that “persuading a single friend to eat one fewer hamburger will do orders of magnitude more good than eliminating all their college AI use.” On the facts, Thompson is right: The emissions produced and water used by ChatGPT pale in comparison to the emissions produced by and water used by the American meat industry.
But what Thompson’s column misses is that we can’t solve climate change by individually cutting down on meat or asking ChatGPT one less question. Instead of concentrating on individual choices, we must focus on the collective: the activism, organizing, and policymaking that can actually make a difference on climate, both at Princeton and in the world beyond our gates.
Thompson — as well as Guest Contributor Gabby Styris, to whom he responds, and my colleague Josh Stiefel — all suggest different approaches to environmental action that, in reality, aren’t that different at all. Thompson, Styris, and Stiefel all have their facts straight (ChatGPT is bad for the environment, meat is worse) — but they share a misguided underlying assumption.
Thompson asks us to persuade a friend to choose a vegetarian meal over a hamburger. Styris advocates for “being mindful of AI’s environmental impact and resisting the temptation to overuse it.” Stiefel writes, “If the 5,800 Princeton undergraduates committed to a 10 percent reduction in consumption of animal products — around two meals a week — the cutback would be equivalent to 580 people newly committing to veganism.”
All of these ideas advocate an approach to environmental action that focuses on individual responsibility rather than collective action, and in doing so divert our attention and efforts away from meaningful climate solutions.
This individualistic approach to climate action is the result of decades of deceptive PR promulgated by fossil fuel companies like BP, the oil and gas giant. In the early 2000s, BP invented and popularized the idea of the “carbon footprint,” which shifted responsibility for climate change off the company and onto individuals. The carbon footprint concept is powerful: It imposes individual guilt for failing to address climate change and encourages self-satisfaction when you “do your part.”
And our society is infused with this attitude. From a New York Times quiz titled, “What’s the Best Way to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint?” to advertising campaigns declaring, “We can all do more to emit less,” the individualistic approach to climate action is everywhere. I’ve partaken in the mindset: I went pescatarian nearly seven years ago in large part because I felt a responsibility to reduce my environmental impact.
But on the grand scale of climate change, it’s almost impossible to meaningfully reduce your carbon footprint, no matter what lifestyle changes you make. That’s because our society is powered by fossil fuels, with 87 percent of annual U.S. emissions coming from industry, electricity generation, agriculture, and transportation, sectors that individual behavior has very little capacity to affect. As Benjamin Franta, then a Stanford graduate student, said, “Even a homeless person living in a fossil fuel powered society has an unsustainably high carbon footprint.”
Even in the categories of emissions where individual choices might have some hope of aggregating to a societal change, it’s a heavy lift: The United States as a whole, for example, consumes about 1.1 million times as much beef as does the Rocky/Mathey dining hall, according to the figures cited by Stiefel.
Nothing we can do as individuals — or even in aggregate as an entire campus community — can make a real dent in emissions or water usage beyond Princeton’s gates.
But coming to understand individual responsibility for the climate crisis as a calculated distraction doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to do something. That’s not to say that there’s no value in making individual lifestyle choices: It is commendable to practice what we preach, and in the long run a climate-friendly world will probably include many fewer burgers eaten. But we shouldn’t hold up our individual choices as an excuse to sit out of collective action.
Fossil fuel giants, industrial farms, gasoline-powered car companies, and the policies and politicians that enable them are more responsible than any individual for the climate crisis. That means it is up to us to hold our institutions accountable to climate action. And the Princeton community has a lot of power to do just that.
On climate research, for example, Princeton is hugely influential. Princeton climate researchers have developed world-class climate models, uncovered social vulnerabilities to flood risks, found that all-of-society climate actions carry substantial health benefits, and made inroads on better battery technology. But much of this research, which is a lifeline for both frontline communities facing the impacts of environmental injustice and coastal communities most vulnerable to hurricanes, is under threat from political headwinds, and it needs all of us to rise up in support of it.
Princeton students should also have access to an environmental studies major to propel them into environmental careers post-graduation and allow them to continue pushing for progress on climate change. But given institutional resistance to such a major offering, it’s up to us to push for it.
The mechanism for our persuasion is clear. Campus activism, particularly when students have good ideas sustained over a multi-year period, can propel meaningful changes in University policy. Climate activists at Princeton, for example, have already won partial divestment and partial dissociation from the fossil fuel industry.
The key to winning climate progress is for students to buy in, and lots of them. The group I organize with, Sunrise Princeton, is fighting for meaningful climate action at Princeton, including funding defunded climate research and completing divestment from fossil fuels. We have a march happening this Friday, Nov. 7, at 5 p.m., beginning in Firestone Plaza, to demand these changes from Princeton.
If you care about making a real difference on climate, you can use ChatGPT to be more productive so you have an hour to spare on Friday, and even eat a hamburger beforehand to be energized if you really need to! But you shouldn’t skip our march as we fight for the future we all deserve — and leave the individualistic view of climate action in the past.
Isaac Barsoum ’28 is a prospective Politics major from Charlotte, N.C. who is a pescatarian but knows much more is needed to avert climate catastrophe. You can read his column here. You can reach him at itbarsoum[at]princeton.edu.
The revision serves as a distraction from the concerns of independents. Worse, it demonstrates that the University is content to ignore student voices.
The revision serves as a distraction from the concerns of independents. Worse, it demonstrates that the University is content to ignore student voices.
On Oct. 31, the Princeton University Art Museum will be open to the public after nearly half a decade of remodeling. Our columnists who attended the Museum Student Preview event on Oct. 25 give us their first impressions.
On Oct. 31, the Princeton University Art Museum will be open to the public after nearly half a decade of remodeling. Our columnists who attended the Museum Student Preview event on Oct. 25 give us their first impressions.
Persuading a single friend to eat one fewer hamburger will do orders of magnitude more good than eliminating all their college AI use. The fact of the matter is that ChatGPT isn’t nearly the environmental catastrophe that some make it out to be.
Persuading a single friend to eat one fewer hamburger will do orders of magnitude more good than eliminating all their college AI use. The fact of the matter is that ChatGPT isn’t nearly the environmental catastrophe that some make it out to be.
