Rich people have a carbon footprint 25 times the size of even the typical American. To tackle climate change, we need to start with fossil capital and the most affluent.

It may well be the case that fighting climate change will require middle-class and even working-class people in wealthy countries to change their lifestyles in the decades ahead. Given, however, the extent to which the rich are disproportionately responsible for global emissions, and the widespread public consensus around raising their taxes, it would be both politically popular and sound policy-wise to emphasize redistributive solutions to the climate crisis.

  • TheConquestOfBed
    7·
    3 years ago

    Liberal Environmental-Science Understander: If Chinese peasants simply stopped breeding we be meeting our climate goals.

    • southerntofu
      4·
      3 years ago

      Sorry to be pedantic but this is so wrong on so many levels. Overpopulation can be considered an issue but is definitely not the issue. The issues are:

      • overproduction
      • gatekeeping access to resources and wilful waste (food waste, empty housing, planned obsolescence)
      • barbaric techniques for production: extractivism as a doctrine, miniaturization as a goal, monocultures with fertilizers for food

      If we just stopped this crazy nonsense called “industrial capitalism” the many billions of us all would live happily, and we wouldn’t have 1M+ endangered species.