The footprint metaphor sanitizes harm and depresses public response

Evidence

Advocates for environmental preservation sometimes manage to undermine their own mission with languid, misleading metaphors. Rather than portraying the harmful effects of human practices in vivid, concrete terms, they characterize those practices in metamorphic terms as leaving an “ecological footprint.” We are beginning to witness footprint creep, with the “carbon footprint,” the “decision footprint,” and the “consumption footprint.” Other types of footprints may be in the offing. However, a static footprint is a bad metaphor for agentic activities that degrade the quality of the environment. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2699

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bandura contrasts metaphorical with concrete vivid language; worth checking the actual literature on whether concrete catastrophic imagery reliably outperforms metaphor in mobilizing action, or whether it can backfire.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2699