Rich driving Climate Crisis
The top ten percent of society are responsible for half of carbon emissions with the top 1% being responsible for 15% of global emissions. In contrast, the poorest produce very little emissions but will bear the brunt of climate and ecological breakdown.
Without restrictions on the very rich, they will end up consuming more than they do now and using up our remaining carbon budget, leaving poorer people and countries unable to meet their energy needs without overshooting. Whether we even have a carbon budget left is up for debate.
Read a round-up of the headlines:
“Gössling's aim was to try to uncover the individual consumption levels of the mega rich, whose lifestyles are often shrouded in secrecy. His research coincided with a growing environmental movement, spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, which put a spotlight on personal accountability. Flying, one of the most carbon-intensive forms of consumption, became a symbol of this new accountability.
"The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty," Thunberg wrote in the Guardian in 2019.
The statistics are startling. The world's wealthiest 10% were responsible for around half of global emissions in 2015, according to a 2020 report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute. The top 1% were responsible for 15% of emissions, nearly twice as much as the world's poorest 50%, who were responsible for just 7% and will feel the brunt of climate impacts despite bearing the least responsibility for causing them…
"This is a false dichotomy," says Akenji. "Lifestyles don't exist in a vacuum, lifestyles are shaped by context." People live their lives within the mostly unsustainable political and economic systems that exist. But, without addressing the lifestyles of the wealthiest and most polluting in our societies, and the power they hold, we won't be able to address climate change.
"Wealthy people set the tone on consumption to which everybody aspires. That's where the toxic effects are," says Halina Szejnwald Brown, professor emerita of environmental science and policy at Clark University in the US.”
BBC, How the rich are driving climate change
“Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change. Here we study the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO2)…Our findings suggest that the share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2. This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget, and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C…
Our findings suggest that there is a very limited chance of changing emission trajectories to net zero over the next 30 years, if growth in millionaires and their emission patterns continues. Notably, results are based on an assessment of direct energy consumption. Adding embedded emissions, for instance for the construction of superyachts, further emphasizes the importance of climate governance for the wealthy.”
Science Direct, Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions
“Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, is a report published by Oxfam today based on a detailed analysis of the investments of 125 of the richest billionaires in some of the world's biggest corporates and the carbon emissions of these investments. These billionaires have a collective $2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies.
The report finds that these billionaires’ investments produce an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than the average for people living in the bottom 90 percent (2.76 tonnes of CO2e).
“These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam. “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long."
“Emissions from billionaire lifestyles – due to their frequent use of private jets and yachts – are thousands of times the average person, which is already completely unacceptable," said Dabi. "But if we look at emissions from their investments, then their carbon emissions are over a million times higher.” said.”
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