Actually, our personal carbon footprint is the whole problem.

We need to stop letting ourselves off the hook.

Having spent my entire working life in energy tech businesses, I’ve developed a sense for the metrics around energy, its consumption, costs, trade-offs of various sources, etc.

So it’s been hard — so hard — to read and watch much of the reporting and commentary around climate issues recently.

Nearly everyone seems … simply lost.

So lost, that many people no longer acknowledge personal responsibility for consumption.

They’ll remind us that an oil company first suggested the idea of measuring individual consumption with a 'footprint’. So what? Does that mean consumers are the victims of producers?

If only they wouldn’t drill that oil or build that pipeline then somehow we wouldn’t burn oil?

Ridiculous. Oil companies produce oil because people buy it. Oh, oil companies are not innocent by any stretch. But without demand, they wouldn’t have a business.

That’s a fact we increasingly just don’t want to face.

Because the only way to really do what we are saying needs to be done to cut global carbon emissions, is for all humans — especially big consumers like Americans, like me, to drastically change how we live.

I’ve read more than one article like this one reassuring readers: Don’t worry about your own…