America's richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds
America's richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds
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.
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.
Every day we're here just to learn billionaires & families should be crushed and their wealth redistributed amongst third world countries.
That would just make other billionaires somewhere else. The problem is the system not the people
Yup, the problem is firmly the system, but suggesting a worldwide change to socialism/communism is less "palatable" and believable by the average person.
So "eat the rich" is a decent compromise for a comment not intended to approach any sort of complex answer, while still being a move in a better direction than suggesting things to continue as they are.
Why advocate for structural changes when we can meme fedpost about a violent solution?
Redistributing the wealth of billionaires is already part of a good structural change, it'll remove from them power they'd use to continue the exploitation of the people. You can substitute "crush" by destitute and incarcerate them if you'd prefer, as long as the wealth isn't on the hands of the few anymore.
If anyone is asking how do we pay to solve the climate crisis. I think its pretty clear who should be paying.
This is true for almost anything. Major corporations, and the investors that profit off of them, pay so little in taxes compared to the average citizen. Instead, their money is devoted to lobbying and setting up careful corporate international glass houses so they don’t have to pay the taxes they should. We can push much harder on tackling social issues, but the top 10% don’t exist in society, they lord over it
the top 10% don’t exist in society, they lord over it
I think you mean they run it
How much money does the top 1% have and how much do you think it will cost to clean up the world? Those two numbers are not even within 3 years of global GDP dipshit.
Last year they increased their wealth by 8 trillion usd. Since 2021 their combined wealth is 42 trillion usd. (Thats twice as much as the rest 99% combined)
It is estimated that to fix the climate crisis it takes between 300 billion - 50 trillion usd. So they actually could do that.
And than there is the matter of comparing personal profit of a few. To the entire value produced by a country. Which is a really dumb comparison.
But you might know that the gdp of the us in 2021 was around 23 trillion.
So your the intellectual floor gymnast, dipshit.
China and India, but you won’t admit it.
Who are the factories of the west and emit co2 for our products.
The U.S. military is the largest single producer of emissions on the planet.
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"
I imagine its just a prick waving contest between the rich. They just compare the number in their account to the others and want to have a bigger number.
The US subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of 600B per year. You pay for pollution with your taxes.
We need a 95% tax bracket for anyone that makes more than a few million/year.
A few million/year is a reasonable amount of money for a (highly) successful person to make. A wealth tax for people making over a billion or just $100M per year is enough to fix a lot of the problems in this country without destroying the "American dream"
The way I see it, if you make enough money to buy a nice, moderate house in California or Hawaii once per year, you are already making too much money. My cutoff would probably be closer to $2-3M... though I'd be willing to go higher if paired with an annual "wealth tax"... say, if you have a value of over - for example - $20M (incl. stocks and any other non-liquid assets) you must pay 20% of any excess value in taxes annually. That would be on top of the 95% multimillionaire income tax.
TL;DR: one doesn't become rich by respecting others.
Anyone else just feel like we should eat the rich?
I think it's way overdue.
On one hand, yes, on the other, eating shit isn't very appealing.
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.
There's a steep cliff between the 95% and the .01%. I wonder what proportion is just the .01
The income of the top 1% alone – households making more than $550,000 – was linked to 15% to 17% of this pollution.
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. To put that in perspective, it’s estimated people should limit their carbon footprint to around 2.3 tons a year to tackle climate change.
Thank you for finding that for me
Got it. Eating the rich for protecting humanity by protecting the climate.
The picture they paint in this article, of the ultra rich with their private jets and yachts, does not align with the statistic presented in the title.
the wealthiest 10% in the US, households making more than about $178,000
I'm sure many of you know people in this group. Two adults each making 90k a year is enough to break into the 10%. And clearly they're not flying around in private jets.
That's true, but most of my social group fits into this definition and the majority fly commercial 6 - 12+ times a year, all around the globe, either for vacation or business travel. They almost all own personal vehicles, replaced every 5 - 10 years, well before the end of life of the vehicle. I live in Colorado and it's common for this class to own/rent a second home or condo in the mountains and take multi-hour drives to those places on the weekend. Those lifestyle choices produce massive amounts of CO2 relative to individuals who otherwise live generally identical lives.
It doesn't take extravagances like private jets to contribute outsized emissions.
CO² tax on oil and fuel production i say.
40% seems low.
Probably because not all of the CEOs all of the enormous corporations, or leaders of the top polluting nations, are in that top 10‰. 10% is just a nice number to use, and I expect that if they went with 15 or 20% then the corresponding amount of pollution they're responsible for would jump up significantly.
That makes sense. I apparently can't do math this morning.
Jesus Christ. Do you know how much the US outputs compared to China and India? Educate yourself instead of following the group think. Seriously, the US is the only country on the planet that is actually going to achieve the Kyoto Agreement and we didn’t even fucking sign up for it. The US literally leads the entire fucking world in reduction of greenhouse gasses and development of green tech and you fucking clowns just sit here and bag on the rich… what a sad bunch of morons you are.
Not even the rich. Apparently workers earning $90k per year is enough to qualify as enemies to these people.
The rich aren't people who work for a living. The rich are the bourgeousie who live parasitically off the rest of us. The people who can buy citizenship to nearly any country they desire. The people with multimillion dollars doomsday bunker communities.
They are pulling up the entire average they have 40% of. They are emitting 6x more than the bottom 90% per capita, so that 6x figure should have been the metric to focus on
They may as well be polluting methane gas because they're so full of shit
As much as I understand the hate towards rich people governments are just as much at fault for subsidising, directly funding and giving land to those companies in the first place for people to be able to make money off them.
Yeah, governments are totally just giving this shit out with no compulsion from the rich.
Because capitalist governments serve the capitalist class
A long time ago, this kind of reckless excess moved the French to remove the top 10% of their ruling class' bodies.
Pretty sure almost everyone in the US is top 40% globally
That's an absolute worthless comparison and you know it
but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
Lemme go ahead and roll my eyes here. Yes, American Airlines produces a significant percentage of the world's greenhouse emissions. But they burn that fuel for the passengers, not just for the benefit of shareholders. Same with ExxonMobil, BP, etc.
Consumption is what drives pollution. Investments to profit off of that consumption is secondary.
Their biggest success is convincing common folks it's out fault.
Consumption driven by advertising based on Edward Bernays work, which explicitly intends to create fissures within people and then sell them cures to the fissures they created,m. Just disallowing advertising would have a substantial effect on consumption.
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 strange accounting method, that almost completely reflects wealth distribution and ignores carbon.
For instance, you might say childhood obesity is a problem, then measure people’s investments in fast food as a measure of their contribution to the problem. And find that it’s the same people at fault, at almost the exact same percentage!
Wouldn’t insurance be one of the lowest carbon footprints? They don’t really make or manufacture anything, minimal fleet presence (like adjusters cars and what not, not like delivery trucks or semis)?
I could see their investments maybe being problematic by investing in other companies that are heavy polluters, but idk maybe I’m missing something? Seems like they wouldn’t have much of a footprint compared to others at their size and scale.
I'd like to buy carbon emission insurance. If it stays above safe levels, I get paid. If it goes below safe levels, I pay them. They adjust rates offered based on its likelihood. Then they'd have a strong incentive to fund various activities to reduce pollution.
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.
If they invest and demand the biggest profit by countering greenification policies so they get more money as shareholder, then they definitely are responsible for the companies pollution.
Wait, how is that possible when China is responsible for 50% of the carbon emissions? This doesn’t add up.
From the article:
They found the wealthiest 10% in the US, households making more than about $178,000, were responsible for 40% of the nation’s human-caused, planet-heating pollution.
So this only focuses on emissions from the US
This, and most of China's carbon emissions come from the production of goods for the rest of the world, so they're not the only ones "responsible" for those 50%.
households making more than about $178,000
So that's a household, meaning it likely is two adults working plus children. I would like to see this broken down more granularly - what percentage is due to the top 1% or top 0.01%, and is it due to investments or private jets, yachts, and recreational space exploration.
I understood it as they are responsible for 40% of americas pollution.
The title is clearly referring to America's polution. Presumably the US only.
Balance it out with some planet-cooling pollution
Ah yes, operation dark storm.
I have been obsessed with The Matrix for multiple decades now and never knew that Neil Gaiman wrote a graphic novel about a guy pulled out of the Matrix to kill aliens. $50 hardcover collection on the way, thank you for sending me to see how far the rabbit hole goes!!
That's a complicated situation because if not rich people, we'll see other rich people in the same situation, like I don't think world's biggest companies will stop existing anytime soon, even if healthy eco alternatives get bigger investiment in the future.
It's not really that complicated; Pigouvian taxes are basic economics. We don't need more investment in eco alternatives as much as less investment in pollution.
And the thumbnail is a picture of a nuclear plant......
That's a coal fired power plant. Specifically the John Amos power plant in W. Virginia.
Ah, sorry. Completely misspoke.
.
Sounds like a conservative nummber