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.

      • ttmrichter
        3·
        3 years ago

        Car culture. Disposal culture. Convenience culture. It all has a price.

    • मुक्त
      2·
      3 years ago

      Interesting side note. Compare the emissions for “poor” Americans and “rich” Indians.

      Almost like rich Indians are poorer than poor Americans.

      • ttmrichter
        4·
        3 years ago

        I’ve been doing that comparison for ages now. The bottom 50% of Americans are more wasteful than the top 10% of five nations. The American average is more wasteful than the top 10% of ten nations. The USA is almost repulsive in how much it emits … doubly so because Americans tend, too, to be the preachiest about emissions to other nations.

  • Demur
    2·
    3 years ago

    Why not start by stopping climate change summits the elites fly into in private jets, fly in convoys of 90 SUVs to transport them from the airport to the conference, etc.