In Our Age of Climate Crisis and Social Media, are Carbon Calculators Worth the Click?

I learned in a recent college lecture that the gas compressor in Weymouth, Massachusetts produces emissions that are equivalent to those of 1.1 million cars. Learning about the Weymouth gas compressor’s emissions skewed my perception of the usefulness of carbon calculators, which have become popular online activities. Online carbon calculators are essentially quizzes that ask questions about the reader’s lifestyle (“what is the fuel efficiency of your car, how many animal products do you consume per week”, etc.) that are used to estimate that individual’s contribution to global carbon emissions. Because one’s emissions are minuscule compared to industrial emissions, carbon calculators seem performative and not impactful on a large scale. Even if I were to never drive a car again after learning about my car’s emissions from a carbon calculator, one compressor alone would emit enough carbon to render my sacrifice irrelevant.

However, I do think that carbon calculators provide helpful context and summaries of each individual’s impact. After an individual becomes aware of their own impact, they have context for understanding the impact of corporations and industrial institutions — such as the Weymouth gas compressor — which may spur them to action. Ideally, this action will take the form of advocacy and protest such as writing to the Governor of Massachusetts about the compressor’s impact on schools, nursing homes, and residential communities, to list a connected example. I believe that using individual carbon calculators as a metaphorical yardstick to hold up against emissions produced by industrial entities may be a practical way to raise awareness about the scale of institutional pollution. Their ability to provide context about carbon emissions to anyone with internet access is a testament to their utility. Furthermore, they are useful because they reveal how intertwined modern lives are with carbon: they remind the reader that the car they drive, the home in which they live, and the food that they consume inevitably produce carbon emissions. In short, modern humans in the United States are trapped in a carbon-producing system from which they have no easily accessible alternatives.

I also believe that carbon calculators’ gimmicky nature delegitimizes them in the eyes of their viewers, thus causing them to be viewed as a fun online activity rather than as a vehicle through which real change can be enacted. In “The carbon footprint sham”, Mark Kaufman argues that corporations use advertisement campaigns and media as propaganda that tricks the viewer into believing that pollution is their problem and something for which they are personally responsible. I believe that this sentiment translates into carbon calculators as well: they too imply that the viewer is entirely, personally culpable for climate change, just as the Native American ad implied that watchers were personally responsible for pollution.

Another criticism of carbon calculators that I hold is that they tend to feel performative and like a form of entertainment rather than research. In an age where people eagerly take BuzzFeed quizzes such as “Pick Starbucks Food and Drink From All Over the World and We’ll Guess If You’re A Fire, Earth, or Water Sign”, low-effort online quizzes that tell the viewer exactly what type of person they are generate likes, shares, and reposts. Carbon calculators often feel akin to BuzzFeed quizzes to me; they appeal to masses but in an easily-repost-able, screenshot-drawing kind of way rather than in one that inspires tangible change. I certainly do believe that, in the age of social media, online venues for climate advocacy need to be widely appealing and if this can only be achieved through carbon calculators, then they do have merit. Unfortunately, it seems that our collective attention spans have become shortened (TikTok, a video-sharing app that limits video lengths to three minutes, has reached one billion monthly, global users) and so it seems likely that carbon calculators may be a more successful way in which to educate individuals about carbon emissions than written articles.

Because carbon calculators are widely appealing, I am conflicted: I perceive them as performative and gimmicky, but their ability to reach wide audiences is a merit that I cannot disregard. The solution that I can envision to make carbon calculators legitimate drivers of change is to market them as the first step; the end of the quiz could include a list of next steps to take (email templates for federal representatives, templates for letters to write to governors, et cetera) that would empower readers to contact local officials.