Richest 1% use their entire annual carbon limit in just 10 days.
Richest 1% use their entire annual carbon limit in just 10 days.
The richest 1% have used their share of the annual global carbon budget —the amount of CO2 that can be added to the atmosphere wi
One Luigi per 100 persons, if there are no cops, we will need less Luigis
Oxfam’s research shows that the richest 1% —comprising 77 million individuals, including billionaires, millionaires, and those earning over $140,000 per year in PPP terms— were responsible for 15.9% of global CO2 emissions in 2019. The bottom 50% (3.9 billion people with an average annual income of $2,000 in PPP terms) accounted for 7.7%
Billionaires and the other 0.01% (not 1%) account for a ludicrously outsized amount of Carbon spend. However the Oxfam research really calls out how outsized even a much Carbon even a much more modest American lifestyle is. $140k/year is a lot even in the US, but still well within what many would call "normal", especially in pricier areas. We spend a lot of time attacking billionaires for their lifestyles (and don't get me wrong -- fuck them all), but the problem is a lot larger than that.
My counter is they are the ones preventing any major changes at the political level. Climate change doesn't impact the wealthy and powerful.
Don't discount the impact of middle- to upper-class NIMBYs preventing political changes locally. Billionaires aren't necessarily the ones demanding that we continue to massively subsidize single-family housing (by using the zoning code to artificially inflate its supply at the expense of multifamily) and exacerbate car-dependency.
It also shows how incredible the impact of the wealth gap on climate issues is even in rich countries like the US. The 1% having per capita emissions of 76t, whereas US average is at 17.6t. It is even starker in Europe with a lot of rich people, but lower per capita emissions.
To be fair, I have already failed to properly recycle an item or two, as well.
It would seem we have a pathway to save the planet, if this is the extant of their transgressions already.
Reminds me that Ben Elton's "This other Eden" imagined (decades ago) an innovative capitalist solution to lock away the 1% in their bubbles ...