Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
www.theguardian.com
Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
160 comments
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The cover photo is a jet plane but remember, US$140,000/year is the threshold they're quoting in the article so the reality is more like a decent car or two and a house in a nicer area will drop you into that range.
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1% of the world's population is 80,000,000 people.
There is too much variance in a population that large to make any reasonable statements or suggest adjustments.
We already know that people living on pennies per day aren't the problem.
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But shouldn't it be easier to adjust the lifestyle of 80 million people rather than 8 billion?
And there are a few easy ones almost everyone in the 1% can chip in: reduce meat consumption, don't fly, buy local and don't buy single use items
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I believe it talk about the 1% wealthy people not the actual 1% of 8 billion.
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People living in pennies per day are actually a huge part of the problem, because they by definition live in industrializing communities.
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Is that individually or per household? This article gives 130k per household or 60k per individual.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich
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Exactly. I wonder what the top 0.5% emit, or the top 0.1% emit. 140k is just a married couple living in a city. But people that live in a city can take public transit or walk to the store, therefore they won’t be contributing that much to these huge emissions.
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This is my family's combined income and my god people need to stop thinking we are wealthy. I'm currently staring at a $1000 car on Facebook marketplace to hopefully save some money because I know how to fix it. I am constantly buying cheap shit to afford to live, we are not rich at all. I have more in common with a homeless person than a wealthy person.
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I don't disagree with you, but relative to the rest of the world we produce a lot more pollution. If anything, there's probably a local peak at a certain income where, you know, you can afford a car but not a recent model with newer regulations, and you might have to fix it up to get it just within range for emissions testing. Stuff like that.
Anyway, it's not about quality of life, it's about pollution. I'm with you on the cost of everything, definitely.
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ITT: People who don't understand cradle to grave manufacturing. When I decide to make a product I take on responsibility for that product until it is no longer in use and has been properly disposed of. That is ethical manufacturing as decided by industry.
If your product is transportation then you are responsible for the emissions created by transporting. The consumer gets no say in it. Even if they were extremely well researched, which no consumer has that type of resources, they are still not privy to all of a businesses practices at every level.
Assholes in this thread want to push off all the responsibility on to consumers, as if being a consumer is unethical. This is a scapegoat for manufacturers who don't want to foot the bill because their product is not viable if you consider the all the corners they cut.
Don't believe me, look up any lawsuit that deals with any superpac. Businesses are responsible.
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It feels disingenuous at best to lump in people making $60k/year with Jeff Bezos and other billionaires. Just twelve billionaires account for 2,100,000 homes worth of emissions, and that's only the raw output of their travel and other direct expenses: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide
Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.
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Twelve of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of 2m homes, ...
“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. ...
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.
Most of that isn't their direct expenses, but from the businesses they own. Their actual travel and direct expenses are a small fraction of the emissions stated in that:
A superyacht kept on permanent standby generates about 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, according to the analysis.
“The emissions of the superyachts are way above anything else,”
The average carbon footprint in the US is 16 tons. 7000/16 = 437.5. The emissions of these billionaires is mostly not private jets and super yachts, and the emissions from super yachts and private jets are a very small percentage of the US's total transportation emissions.
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The emissions of these billionaires is mostly not private jets and super yachts, and the emissions from super yachts and private jets are a very small percentage of the US’s total transportation emissions.
I'd say their personal emissions for their luxuries are still significantly several times the average person.
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Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.
Don't forget that you have more than one finger. You have fingers to spare to point blame at those who deserve it, and few of us in first world countries don't.
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Yeah, 1% of 8.1 billion is 81 million. So, it's roughly the top 10% of population of the wealthiest countries.
That includes both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but also middle managers in marketing, astronomers, HR managers, air traffic controllers, etc.
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so we cut cut emissions by 60% with a guillotine
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Or... we can just double the efford for maximizing gains and see introducing 2% with guillotine give as profit?
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Temporary solution
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No shit?
Of course the 1% are accounting for the majority of personal emissions, they are the only ones who can afford to.
What I want to know is how much of the total emissions are non private in origin.
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If that shit were cheaper, people would be all over it.
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That's bullshit of a report. If you read it, you will quickly learn how they calculate emissions from the rich. They include things like owning company shares and having influence over the media. So if Bezos owns a major stake in Amazon, he is automatically responsible for all Amazon emissions. And if his PR team publishes some stuff to FB, he's now responsoble for emissions of Facebook servers. That's utter bullshit.
If you buy from Amazon, it's YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos. This report also doesn't take into account that better off people usually live in well-insulated homes, drive more efficient cars and eat better organic food, thus reducing their footprint further.
This report also mentions yachts and private jets a lot, but don't forget that ALL airtraffic accounts only for 2% of all emissions and private jets are a drop in the ocean.
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eat better organic food
A slight nit-pick here, but when it comes to greenhouse gas impact, organic food may be worse. It's certainly not clearly better.
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Almost definitely worse lol. We have the option to modify the genome of the plants we eat in order to make then better in every way and still some people are like "no that's icky because science".
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Yeah I've overheard that before too. If they would just change their words to "eat less meat" they're be right, but to only say "organic" implies standard agriculture is worse, and it is not clearly so.
We should eat less meat though.
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organic food definitely uses more resources per unit output than "commercial" ag. It can't supply the world's food supply unless they greatly increase their capabilities. It's either "modern methods" or we reduce the worlds population.
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I'll be honest, I do believe that CEOs should be personally held repsonsible for the shit their companies pull, in general. And after-the-fact, too. If you led a company and later it gets fined for something it did while you were CEO, that's on you. Say 50% of fines have to be paid by the C-suites personally.
But independent of that, in a report such as this, it of course makes little sense because the title wants to strongly suggest they create more carbon emissions as consumers (say via owning yachts and shit) than the poorest 66%. And that's a very false equivalence. Now you could argue they're responsible for more carbon emissions, and I would maybe agree with that, yes. They make the decisions that enable this carbon usage, and they could, if they wanted to, cut large swathes of it albeit probably not lasting.
But yeah, agreed, pretty shit headline.
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The point of a Limited Company is that people who own and work for the company are not held responsible for the actions of the company. Exceptions apply, of course. This is done to protect people from the failures of the business. If the company you work for goes bankrupt for whatever reason, you don't want to owe millions to the creditors of the company out of your pocket.
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If you buy from Amazon, it’s YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos.
That would only be true if Amazon had real competition and would not be acting like a monopoly, as many other companies do.
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Amazon is very much not a monopoly. There are thousands of online retailers. There are also a lot of delivery services, no idea if there are thousands, but there's a lot.
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And if they would offer a envoirementfriendly alternative, that nobody uses.
But let me tell you a non secret, they dont give a shit
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Amazon is NOT a monopoly. And the problem here is not Amazon, but the products YOU buy. It doesn't matter if you buy from Amazon or Wallmart or whatever.
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better off people usually live in well-insulated homes...
Remember Al Gore's house that he was touting back around 2007 as super energy efficient? Then some news outlets reported it used 25x as much energy as a normal single family home.
Snopes looked into it and said false, it only uses 10x as much electricity as a normal house, but that's okay because it's 4 times the size of a normal house.
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I mean yeah, that's a really good savings.
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That's one way to not be accountable
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If you buy from Amazon, it’s YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos.
no, i'm not.
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Yes, you are.
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Please explain how you aren't responsible for the emissions used to manufacture/deliver the product that you personally purchased.
Did someone force you to buy it? No? Then it's your fault.
REDUCE. REUSE. RECYCLE.
The more products you consume, the more emissions for those products. If you don't like it, then don't buy it. Source from responsible retailers, or at least don't buy from fucking Amazon. Everything about the system we live in exists because people like you throw money at billionaires and then complain that they're rich.
"I'm not responsible for being a consumer whore" is the exact lack of personal responsibility that makes anything else you say a joke.
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It is worth noting that the richest 1% includes everyone who makes more than 140k$/year.
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Their description makes it sound like a pump glass so I’m going with that
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when you own 90% of the wealth and resources, i'm kind of shocked that is "poorest 90%"
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says.
For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide.
Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans.
“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction and it is those who can least afford it who are paying the highest price,” said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser.
The extravagant carbon footprint of the 0.1% – from superyachts, private jets and mansions to space flights and doomsday bunkers – is 77 times higher than the upper level needed for global warming to peak at 1.5C.
Oxfam International’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, said: “Not taxing wealth allows the richest to rob from us, ruin our planet and renege on democracy.
The original article contains 853 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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No shit
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Aren't you now glad we aren't all ultra rich mofos ? Noone would be able to breathe that out.
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You don't say...
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In other news, water is wet
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This is why I don’t believe people when they say “we don’t have an overpopulation problem, we have a distribution problem”
Because if everyone in the world had my lifestyle, we would be emitting an insane amount of carbon. And I don’t want my standard of living to go down, and in fact I want everyone to live as nicely as I do. So clearly we need fewer people.
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The overpopulation isn't happening in the 1%.
It makes jack shit of a difference to the environment if there is one billion or two billion starving people. They're not the ones burning carbon or eating steak.
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On the other hand, if everyone in the world had your lifestyle the world would be much more wealthy and could make a lot of positive changes.
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Are you flying around the world on PJs constantly?
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All air travel is only 2% of carbon emissions.
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I want everyone to have my lifestyle
Its the thought that counts, but no thanks
160 comments
ITT: people who don't realize that the article is talking about them because they're either in that 1% or damn close to it.
Yeah, 60k/year per person is the top 1% globally. That's about 60% of the us if I'm doing my math right.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
60% of the US population is like 200 million. 1% of the global population is 80 million. Your maths is way off.
I'd assume something closer to 6% of the US are in the top 1%.
Yup most of the Western world is in the top 1 percent. The rest of the Western world benefits from it.
It's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me.
Quoting Taylor Swift is.... an interesting choice when talking about climate changes.
Didn't her recent tour require 90+ semi trucks just to go from city to city? Not even going to mention all the emissions that result from whenever they have to travel by plane.
Yes, popular music acts that tour are a HUGE part of the problem.
Also, my bad I'm not tryna harp on you just because I recognized a song lyric. I'm a Taylor Swift fan myself. Well, more of a chiefs fan. And by value of the transitive property....
Edit: also apparently all air travel only accounts for about 2% of emissions. So while my point isnt technically wrong it's missing the forest for the trees
Just how small do you think the western world is? The US alone is 330 million, which is 4% of the world's population.
It's funny how often people who are in the global 5-10% talk about how clueless the 1% of the West is, while being so clueless about their own wealth.
The world's population is about 8.1 billion. The top 1% of that is 81 million. The population of the G7 (a reasonable substitute for the richest countries) is approx 800 million. So, if you're in the top 10% and in a G7 country, you're in that top 1%.
Top 10% income in the US is approx $170k per year. That's mid-level manager wages.
Are you not conflating top 10% of wealthy people with top 10% of wealth? Looking at these differently vastly changes the results, e.g.:
Of course, in the real world numbers are much more skewed and you have hundreds of millions in developing nations at the bottom making literal pennies a day, bringing the "top 10%" of wealth (not top 10% of wealthy people) to include some single mom making 45k in the US.