Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds
Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds
Research shows impact from lifestyles and investments of likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk
Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels.
This is not a billionaire's climate emissions.
If the car I own tallies onto my carbon footprint, surely the corporations owned by the billionaires enjoy the same designation.
They're no different because of what they own.
If you lend your car to your cousin for a cross- country road trip, does your cousin's road trip count as his emissions, yours, or should it be double counted?
Similarly, my 401k has an S&P 500 fund in it, which contains some fossil fuel stocks. Does my carbon footprint go up every month by whatever fraction of a percent of Exxon my retirement fund buys each month?
When you eat a steak, whose emissions are the methane the cow burped? Yours? The ranchers? Cargills? Walmart's?
Honestly, consumption-based accounting makes way more sense to me.
Yeah - at best they are morally responsible for not choosing to invest in something else but in the end as long as there's capitalism and people are creating demand for whatever polluting thing they procude someone else will step in
The Demand has to be slashed by making those products less profitable if the general public is not acting in their own interest because polluting is cheaper and more comfortable
Especially if people are just going directly to "eat the rich" after articles like this I really wonder what they think will happen if the oil-production is stopped completely from one day to the next? And that even assumes that noone will step up to continue the production - what if the state takes over the oil-company and spreads the emissions evenly among every citizen - would that solve the problem of climate change in their minds?
capitalism and people are creating demand for whatever polluting thing they procude someone else will step in
Capitalism is not why people like electricity, food, and entertainment. All of those things predate capitalism. The USSR contributed to climate change.
Anyone trying to make climate change a leftist issue is a moron. Every economic policy would contribute to climate change becaus every economic policy needs to guarantee heat, food, transport, etc.
But it does make a title that gets clicks.
This is not a billionaire’s climate emissions.
Yes. It is.
“These people have an outsize political influence because of their enormous wealth, which they use to leverage local and national governments, gaining exemptions from taxes and privileges that allow them to pollute and to influence laws regulating pollution,” said Wilk, a professor of anthropology at Indiana University. “If you look at them as entities, some of them are rivalling states in terms of their influence.”
God. It makes me so fucking mad.
I wonder if there's some simple way to completely halt the emissions from those twelve.
End carbon emissions with this one strange
trickbrick!The carbon footprints of the investments were calculated by examining the equity stakes that the billionaires held in companies. Estimates of the carbon impact of their holdings was calculated using the company’s declarations on scope 1 emissions – direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company – and scope 2, indirect emissions.
Scope 2 emissions are those from the products sold by the company. For example, if you fill your car up at Exxon, the emissions from you driving on that tank of gas is part of Exxon's scope 2 emissions. The fossil fuel industry is mostly scope 2 emissions, while a company like Amazon is mostly scope 1 emissions.
(The Gates foundation has $1.4 billion invested in fossil fuel companies like BP)[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/gates-foundation-has-14bn-in-fossil-fuels-investments-guardian-analysis]. If you look at that article, Gates has the second- highest carbon footprint on that list of billionaires. Reading that article, it seems very likely that Gate's emissions are mostly scope 2.
Completely halting Gates emissions, as calculated this way, would involve just shutting down whatever percentage of BP he owns. Gas prices would get higher, without actually solving any of the underlying issues causing that demand, like car-centric urban design. It'd likely do nothing, as other gas companies would start to pump more in the medium term and emissions would quickly go back up.
Minor correction, scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the use of purchased energy (generally electricity). What you are describing (driving your car that was filled at Exxon) is scope 3 emissions for Exxon.
I hope it's a delicious way!
The secret's in the sauce....
since they included pollution from the companies those people own (which is a very weird way to attribute it) not a thing will change as long as there's demand for what those companies produce
sure, just have to close down all the industry. the millions of people employed in those industries will just have to find a different job. simple, innit?
I think the message that want to be passed by this article is probably pro-oil industry. It gives a false impression that we could tackle ecology not by changing our habits but just be mad at a few billionaires. And this is factually false.
Unlike wealth pollution is more equitably shared among people. Here in order to demultiply the calculated pollution of billionaires they introduced thier industry and the pollution of their employees somehow.
And while it is expected these people pollute more. Getting rid of them will not reduce the pollution as one could expect.
unfortunately everyone, even not the wealthiest will need to change how they live to have a visible impact on pollution. broadly speeking, not just CO2, as we have a lot more ecological problems than global warming. Note the focus on global warming alone is also a strategy to hide the real changes that need to ne made in order to prevent humanity to hurt itself too much by destroying its own ecosystem.
Edit: As I am being downvoted it looks people probably misunderstood my message. I would gladly get rid of super rich people. But while this would help, we would all still need to make efforts. Until we accept that we should change our way of life, we will not solve our balance with our ecosystem.
I think the message that want to be passed by this article is probably pro-oil industry.
It's not even that
They specifically say that the numbers wouldn't be this skewed if you didn't count their companies as their own personal emissions.
It's just a stupid article all around.
Cart before the horse. Get rid of the billionaires, then work on individual consumption. Some of us have been recycling and trying to save the environment most of our lives while Taylor Swift flies her private jet to Italy to get a gelato.
Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels.
Private jets aren't great, but they're objectively a tiny part of emissions. According to the EPA,
If we banned private jets, we'd decrease emissions by somewhere under 2%, assuming we're just banning the larger luxury private jets Taylor Swift is chauffered in, not the recreational 2-4 seat single prop aircraft that pilots own. Taylor Swift's jet was in the news for polluting as much as 1,184.8 average people. That's not equitable, but objectively it's a pretty small part of the problem.
Passenger vehicles are 58% of transportation emissions. If you include freight trucks, they're 83% of transportation emissions. Insisting on eliminating 2% of emissions before we even think about reducing 58% of emissions is the definition of putting the cart before the horse.
The problem with driving isn't with individual people deciding to drive instead of walking 2 hours to get groceries. It's the car-centric Euclidean zoning and sprawling (sub)urban design that makes driving the only practical option. If you can get the average person to drive 4% less by e.g. giving them a neighborhood pub they can bike to in 5 minutes, you've done more to decrease emissions than by grounding every private jet.
I mean, don't get me wrong - we can do both at the same time. But Taylor Swift's emissions are objectively more a matter of equity and optics than substance. You don't fix climate change by hyperfixating on eliminating 2% of emissions.
We all know the solution. It’s only 12 of them. It can’t be that difficult.
Can't wait to be rid of Taylor swift music
2.1 mili homes
I'm... quite sure they do worse than that.
I'd be interested in knowing how much more emissions come specifically from private plane owners. Not just billionaires, but celebrities that use their planes to fly short distances
Roughly 0%. The combined total of all air traffic, 6 million flyers every day, is about 2% of emissions
All private plane use is going to be a tiny percentage of that already small percentage.
That seems way too low...
Just curious, do people here have a 401k, money market accounts or IRAs? I'd be interested if people know what companies their savings account is actually invested in. Especially at the corporate level where you have a long term blended retirement fund, I'm sure some people will be surprised..
With pensions gone and Social Security unlikely to exist when Millennials and younger retire, we have no choice but to hand our retirement savings to Wall Street. Otherwise it's impossible to even beat inflation long term, let alone to have enough compound interest to actually live off of.
You can set up your 401k to only invest in good companies, but again, it's unlikely to be enough to actually retire off of. I wasted my best savings years trying to do this and failed. I don't like it, but index funds that include small pieces of evil companies are pretty much the only valid option.