Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-saysA less discussed but faster-growing problem is inequality within countries. Billionaires are still overwhelmingly white, male and based in the US and Europe, but members of this influential class of super-rich can increasingly be found in other parts of the world. Millionaires are even more dispersed.
The report says this is bad news for the climate on multiple levels. 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.
The corporate shares of many super-rich are highly polluting. This elite also wield enormous and growing political power by owning media organisations and social networks, hiring advertising and PR agencies and lobbyists, and mixing socially with senior politicians, who are also often members of the richest 1%, according to the report.
In the US, for example, one in four members of Congress reportedly own stocks in fossil fuel companies, worth a total of between $33m and $93m. The report says this helps to explain why global emissions continue to rise, and why governments in the global north provided $1.8tn to subsidise the fossil fuel industry in 2020, contrary to their international pledges to phase out carbon emissions.