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.
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
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
They absolutely are not. 90 trucks is nothing.
At any given time there are millions of semis (2.97 million total) driving the streets. Literally every single thing you’ve ever purchased in your life has been on a semi.
90 trucks driving for a couple months is not significant.
I already mentioned I was wrong about the air travel. I looked up the numbers and edited my comment immediately.
Yeah the trucks are a drop in the sea as well.
But stop kidding yourself that the 90 semi trucks is nothing. It’s all pollution.
What other tour and/or concert is slipping around 90 semi trucks??
You bring up a good point that there are millions of semi trucks on the road. But that’s ridiculous to compare her 90 semi trucks to all the trucks on the road
Let’s compare her to other touring artists. To be honest I don’t have the numbers off top of my head I’ll have to look him up. But I was reading an article the other day about how her tour is one of the largest productions to date.
So no, her 90 trucks are not a huge part of the problem. That wording was wrong on my part. But among touring artist, she is easily one of the biggest polluters.
Honestly 90 semi trucks are a tiny problem. So once we’re down to pop acts, we solved climate issues already. Long solved.
As I replied to other people, yes the wording was poor.
But, it’s so silly to compare her fleet of semi trucks to all the semi trucks in the world. I mean wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to compare her to other touring acts? Was just reading an article yesterday about how hers is one of the largest and most expensive tours ever.
That’s nothing. If 90 trucks were a HUGE part of the problem we’d have solved that in an hour. The problem is in the millions of trucks, cars, ships, airplanes, plants, etc.
Yes my wording was terrible. you’re right that it’s the millions of other things constantly polluting that’s the problem.
My point was just that her tour is one of the largest ever. Largest ever also means one of the most polluting ever.
It’s a joke with many layers
fwiw I used to live in India many years ago.
Was lucky enough to emigrate to the states when I was eight years old. We didn’t have a car back then. My dad had a moped that we used a lot.
But yeah, I didn’t use to be part of the problem. But now I am as well
Just how small do you think the western world is? The US alone is 330 million, which is 4% of the world’s population.
And the EU is 450M.
By the numbers a bit less than half the Western world is in the one percent.
Edit - I should have been more clear above. I was thinking about countries, not people.
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.
I understand the distinction you’re making, but in this case we’re talking about the top 1% of wealthiest people. From the article:
The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019
Also, the phrase “the top 10% of wealth” doesn’t really make any sense. How can wealth itself have percentiles? A percentile shows the percentage of scores that a particular score surpassed. So, the wealthiest 10% means people whose wealth is higher than 90% of other people. What would the top 10% of wealth be?
I think the point you’re trying to make is that the top 0.01% are much, much wealthier than the typical person in the top 1%, and probably one individual in that top 0.01% probably contributes as much CO2 as hundreds or thousands of people who are merely in the top 1%. And, I fully agree. But, this article has put the cutoff at the top 1%, which includes both Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates but also your dentist, the guy who owns the Chevy dealership, and the woman who manages the HR department.
Two things can be true. In this case, it’s that the ultra-wealthy with private jets, multiple houses, etc. live lifestyles that put out vast amounts of CO2. But, also, a fairly average American lifestyle is also very CO2 intensive, compared to how a poor person in India or Cameroon lives.
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/
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.
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.
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
In the US, 7% of transportation emissions are commercial air travel, while 58% are passenger cars.
Flying is worse per-trip than driving, but car centric infrastructure is worse than flying.
Similarly, what you eat is way more important than how far it traveled. Most agricultural emissions happen at the farm.
It’s actually better for the environment to grow tomatoes in Florida or Mexico and ship them to NYC in the fall or winter than to grow tomatoes locally in a heated greenhouse.
The problem here is that this research works from a Capitalist understanding of responsibility. That is to say that Besos is responsible for the emissions of Amazon, musk for space x, etc. Which means absolutely nothing. It’s a bullshit number.
How else would you account for it? Am I responsible for 0.001% of Amazon’s CO2 emissions because I order sometimes from them?
Industry already decided this argument and it’s called cradle to grave.
I think the answer is yes.
Poor Besos cannot decide what and how he delivers. He just needs to deliver to anybody who posts an order on the website someone put up on the internet. Kinda like Santa?
He can decide, and his middle managers can decide, and you can also decide by choosing to shop from somewhere else.
You think you’re not?
I don’t really have knowledge nor control over how green Amazon’s delivery is. If you shift responsibility to a party that cannot make well-informed decisions, you kind of end up with the mess we currently have, no?
The whole idea of money not having a memory is a huge scheme of capitalists to get out of any kind of responsibility.
Amazon has the best logistics infrastructure of any company in the world. It is literally the most efficient system of moving goods ever known to mankind.
You are responsible for the carbon footprint of things you purchase, yes. This is why things like carbon taxes with dividends are such good ideas.
You are the person to set in motion the apparatus necessary to accomplish the task that you wanted to be accomplished.
Yes you live in this late stage capitalist hellscape with the rest of us, but that doesn’t absolve you from being critical and making the best decisions in it.
This is absolutely a dog shit example of math, but in no way is anyone involved at all employing capitalist understandings of anything.
This entire study is a fiction designed to point the finger at a small subset of people.
Okay so you rather think they were doing it on purpose than doing from ideology. I have a bit more regard for people I guess
I think they’re arguing entirely from ideology, but that the ideology is not at all “pro capital”
That’s a mischaracterization of what it means to argue from ideology. They only have to accept the idea that ownership of the means of production means ownership of the pollution from the means of production.
Which is a. Very common and b. The only explanation through which this research makes sense without attributing malice.
People living in pennies per day are actually a huge part of the problem, because they by definition live in industrializing communities.
No. That’s just something you made up.
“Industrializing nations” are easier to address than the nations that have already industrialized.
The momentum behind existing industry is huge. Like a coal industry that is difficult to dismantle because of regressive political leaders.
For countries with no existing infrastructure it’s cheaper to go green than not.
Capitalists demand a return on their polluting industrial investments annd are the majority of the problem.
If an auto manufacturers started from zero today, they wouldn’t be creating gasoline engines.
Zero emission aircraft are next but that doesn’t mean the airlines are going to scrap all their existing aircraft engines and the pollution they cause.
I didn’t just make this up. This is a huge problem facing the world because those nations have a right to improve for their people (and many, myself included, view developed nations as having an obligation to help these nations modernize), but we cannot allow for them to fully modernize using the processes we did or global warming is dramatically exacerbated.
This is a real, urgent, and complex problem, and real life is not a game of Civilization. You can’t just start Congo further along down your tech tree and expect them to be totally green.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sure. In terms of directly produced emissions, most billionaires emit somewhere between 100-1000 times as much as the average American.
Which, yeah, isn’t all that equitable. But there just aren’t that many billionaires, and there’s hundreds of millions of average Americans.
It’s not like wealth, where the richest 735 billionaires have as much wealth as the poorest 166 million Americans.
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.
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.
so we cut cut emissions by 60% with a guillotine
Or… we can just double the efford for maximizing gains and see introducing 2% with guillotine give as profit?
Temporary solution
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.
If that shit were cheaper, people would be all over it.
eat the rich! a bearded man once told us
I’m now a Marxist-Cannibalist.
Wouldn’t eating the rich be survival cannibalism at this point?
Some say cannibalism, some say saving the Earth.
If I could, I would give your comment two likes.
All ways of extinguishing the massive concentration of wealth are valid and welcome.
Burn them at the stick !!! 🥵 🤗
Was it perhaps an irishladdie?
when you own 90% of the wealth and resources, i’m kind of shocked that is “poorest 90%”
The climate chasm between the world’s carbon-guzzling rich and the heat-vulnerable poor forms a symbolic shape when plotted on a graph. Climate-heating greenhouse gas emissions are so heavily concentrated among a rich minority that the image resembles one of those old-fashioned broad-bowled, saucer-shaped glasses beloved of the gilded age: a champagne coupe.
Do normal people know what a champagne coupe is? I had to look it up.
Their description makes it sound like a pump glass so I’m going with that
I thought it sounded like a fancy punch bowl.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
GMO != organic as far as I know?
In the US organic means no GMOs as well according to usda
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.
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.
Isn’t it more planet reponsible then to order from Amazon where, if I order say 6 items, they’ll come from the same warehouse in the same delivery (at least ove here!) instead of in 6 deliveries from 6 different vendors who also all had to get individual deliveries of their stock first?
You don’t say…
