America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
That gave a carbon footprint for each dollar of economic activity in the US, which the researchers linked to households using population survey data that showed the industries people work for and their income from wages and investments.
The report also identified “super-emitters.” They are almost exclusively among the wealthiest top 0.1% of Americans, concentrated in industries such as finance, insurance and mining, and produce around 3,000 tons of carbon pollution a year.
Kimberly Nicholas, associate professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden, who was not involved in the report, said the study helps reveal how closely income, especially from investments, is tied to planet-heating pollution.
Sometimes when people talk about ways to tackle the climate crisis, they bring up population control, said Mark Paul, a political economist at Rutgers University who was also not involved in the study.
Globally, the planet-heating pollution produced by billionaires is a million times higher than the average person outside the world’s wealthiest 10%, according to a report last year from the nonprofit Oxfam.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s a stretch to say that because they invest in a company, that they “produce” the greenhouse gases that that company emits.
Yeah, they could invest elsewhere but it’s just disingenuous to say they’re responsible for all those carbon emissions.
The US subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of 600B per year. You pay for pollution with your taxes.
Every day we’re here just to learn billionaires & families should be crushed and their wealth redistributed amongst third world countries.
TL;DR: one doesn’t become rich by respecting others.
Anyone else just feel like we should eat the rich?
Won’t stop the meat producing companies or the oil companies from existing - that just moves the emissions of them to their heirs.
That metric is really bad - as long as there’s demand for gas or meat those emissions need to be attached to someone - and attaching them to the owner just takes away all responsibility from everyone and tells them that they don’t have to change anything.
If BP would Stop producing oil tomorrow the price would probably jump but then other companies would step in and fill that gap and nothing would’ve changed pollution wise.
Envy and jealousy will get you nowhere in life. Strive to do better. Maybe join the upper classes through hard work and sacrifice?
Thanks for the suggestion I just became a billionaire
If anyone is asking how do we pay to solve the climate crisis. I think its pretty clear who should be paying.
Feel like some people here are being emotionally invested thinking this study is a sort of a blame game encouraging us to berate the wealthy individuals for their investments. I can’t say whether the researchers had this in mind or not but from reading the study it looks like an aim of devising this metric was to figure out a strategy of investment taxation to deter wealthy people from investing in industries that are ravaging the planet:
By linking GHG emissions with the incomes it enables our work has quantified the scale of emissions inequality in U.S. society and the extreme and growing concentration of emissions among very wealthy households. It also offers some suggestions on how accelerated decarbonization and revenue generation might occur, such as an income or shareholder-based carbon tax that reflects the GHG intensity of one’s income sources or financial assets. This is distinct from consumer facing carbon taxes that rely on individuals decarbonizing the economy by shifting their consumption to less GHG intensive goods and services and thereby encouraging companies to respond to their new preferences. A consumer-facing approach assumes individual consumers have the knowledge, financial resources, and agency to shift spending and the power to alter corporate decision making on the GHG intensity of their supply chain and operations. An alternative income or shareholder facing carbon tax puts pressure on executives and large shareholders (i.e. those with the most economic and corporate power) to act in their own self-interest and decarbonize their supply chain and operations in order to reduce taxes on their compensation and investments. Recent work has calculated that a climate inspired wealth tax could indeed be an effective tool to raise revenue for adaptation and mitigation efforts [52, 53].
GTFO with your economics! We’ll just solve all externalities with social pressure. /s
So fucking sick of billionaires
What do you even do when you exceed 100 Millions?
They must be mentally sick in some way “just one mooare billion pleaaase”
If you have over a billion dollars, you could spend every waking moment shovelling money into a fire and you would still have over a billion dollars when you die
When I first started reading this sentence, I thought I was with you, but by the end I was scratching my head.
My point is how much money a billion is. You literally couldn’t get rid of it fast enough to keep it from piling up (assuming it is accruing risk free interest).
