3
I love that analogy. No, you're not going to personally save the world by reducing your carbon footprint. But you know what you are going to be? One leaf on a tree in a forest, making that little bit more oxygen that helps collectively make the world a better place.
And that's worth doing. Especially if you can encourage other people to be leaves too.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook
The term would literally not exist in the public consciousness were it not for BP using it to shift blame. But yes, the concept itself is valid.
It might've been invented by Big Oil, but if you keep giving money to Big Oil to buy fossil fuel you're at least partially responsible for the carbon emissions released by burning that fuel.
People have trouble with the concept of partial blame, they want to feel innocent. Black and white thinking, low-resolution ethics.
It's a necessary suppression to underpin individualist ideologies, I think.
Nevertheless, remember that the 'footprint' decisions of one oil exec outweigh the decisions of thousands or millions (or billions if you include descendants) of ordinary folk. But we do also outnumber them to that extent, so we have adequate power collectively.
People always take private jets as an example. And while they are very polluting, air traffic is only responsible for 2-3 % of all CO2 emissions. Transportation in general is responsible for almost a quarter of all emissions, and almost half of that is just regular cars, road freight is a third and the rest is aviation and shipping. So all the passenger cars are responsible for around 12.5 % of all emissions. That's mostly just people going to work or grocery shopping.