With the IPCC report and climate change in the news, a couple of reminders are due:
"The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” - contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015."
The so-called “polluter elite” must change their lifestyles to tackle climate change, a report says.
"Luxury consumption by the rich concentrates economic activity and delivers negligible extra wellbeing, yet sucks up vast amounts of resources."
Demand would shift from luxuries to necessities.
"Affluent individuals can emit several ten thousand times the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to the global poor."
The billionaire’s new book, a bid to be taken seriously as a climate campaigner, has attracted the usual worshipful coverage. When will the
"Half of all our economic activity – all the mines, all the factories, all the power stations, all the shipping, and all of the ecological impact that’s associated with these things – is done to make rich people richer."
Ecological breakdown isn’t being caused by everyone equally. If we are going to survive the 21st century, we need to distribute income and w
"The wealthiest 0.54%, about 40 million people, are responsible for 14% of lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions."
We need to move towards ‘sufficiency-oriented’ lifestyles.
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis!
The Leeds University study looked at 86 countries and came to broadly the same conclusions about the rich.
"The world’s superyacht fleet uses over thirty-two million gallons of oil and produces 627 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year . The world’s superyachts consume and pollute more than entire nations."
Mansions, superyachts, luxury cars, and private jets produce more carbon emissions than whole countries. Researchers are calling it “green c
"The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury."
Increased spending power leads to environmental damage. It’s time for a radical plan, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
The wealthy pose our single biggest obstacle to environmental progress.
They coarsen our culture, erode our economic future, and diminish our democracy. The ultra-rich have no redeeming social value.
"The people who are actively cranking up the global thermostat and threatening to drown 20 percent of the global population are the billionaires in the boardrooms."
As the world faces environmental disaster on a biblical scale, it's important to remember exactly who brought us here.
There no undivided, undifferentiated "humanity" that caused climate change. It is the fault of the ultra-rich, of capitalism, and of an economic system that prioritises growth over all else.
A better world is possible. It doesn't include rich people.
