Google Flights accused of 'airbrushing' emissions by changing calculations
EuronewsAug 25, 2022
According to climate experts, Google has "airbrushed" the full environmental impact of air travel through updates made to its flight carbon calculator in July.
Critics say the calculator - which estimates the potential impact of different flights on the climate - effectively halved total emission figures when it began excluding "carbon dioxide equivalent" emissions involved in flying, such as water vapour, last month.
Google is greenwashing the effects of the aviation industry and hundreds of millions of users are underestimating the environmental impact of their journeys as a result. Carbon footprint calculations are crucial to understanding the cost of human activity - Google needs to be held accountable for misleading consumers.
While Google's poor practices are certainly irresponsible, the very notion of a "carbon footprint" was the brainchild of big oil, designed to shift accountability for climate change from corporations onto individuals. Rather than concentrating on private individual actions to tackle global warming - as is encouraged by programs like carbon calculators - we must seek collective action and policy reform.
There's an 85% chance there will be at least 2˚C degrees of global warming by 2100, according to the Metaculus prediction community.