Climate Change: Blame the Consumer Not the Company?

Stephen Reicher (a member of the UK's SAGE subcommittee advising on behavioural science) flags up the 'greenwash' strategy to climate change, used by big business. He suggests they seek to continue business as usual, by distraction. The customer is blamed, rather than the company (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/09/cop26-leaders-climate-crisis). Reicher illustrates this by reference to recent McDonald's advertising (although it seems to apply much more generally). McDonalds have boasted in their mantra 'Change a little change a lot', about their recycling of cooking oil, coffee cups and plastic toys. Reicher points out, however, that this is 'small beer' compared to the company's carbon footprint for beef. This is estimated to be around 22m metric tons of 'greenhouse gas' emissions per annum. Concomitantly, McDonalds is advertising their limited offer for the 'double Big Mac'. They are, he says, effectively trying to get customers to double their beef consumption. Customers could elect to not do this. If they do take up the offer, emissions are their fault! Reicher maintains that much of the discussion in Cop26, was about business as usual whilst dumping responsibility on to the general public. He points out that the meeting was attended by more than 500 representatives from fossil fuel companies (I have not seen this commented on elsewhere). That was a much bigger 'delegation' than that from any of the participating countries. One wonders why they were there, as they were supposedly not allowed to speak?