cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21822936
“If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990,”
The study assesses the contribution of the highest emitting groups within societies and finds that the top 1% of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to Amazon droughts.
The research sheds new light on the links between income-based emissions inequality and climate injustice, illustrating how the consumption and investments of wealthy individuals have had disproportionate impacts on extreme weather events
Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth,"
Reminder, if you’re on lemmy, you are most likely in the 10%.
Then they blame poor people for having too many kids.
Us 90% ers up for a class action?
Dont forget your paper straw and paper bag for your groceries
It takes only around $850k of net worth to be in the global 1% for wealth. Minimum wage ($7.25/hr) will put you in the top 10% of wages. So this really just says industrialized nations have been responsible for most emissions.
The world top 10% grossing earners start at $49,000
You’re talking about income. They’re talking net worth.
Very different top 10% sets
That might not have been true for the entirety of time since the 90’s
Partially, I agree your conclusion, but I believe some clarifications could help on the math part, because minimum wage will never put you in the top 10% of world income.
From investopedia 2024:
How Much Income Puts You in the Top 1%, 5%, 10%?
Individuals in the top 10% earn at least six figures annually. In some areas, those in the top 1% must make over $1 million per year, while in others, the threshold is lower.
That’s the top 10% in the United States. They’re talking about the top 10% in the world.
I don’t think so. I have the impression that the introduction part was talking in general, mainly because it says The amount varies by location and local wage trends, and then it talks about the US, specifically.
Appart from that, in page 23 of the Global Wealth Report 2024 by UBS in The global weath pyramyd 2023 it also says saomething similar, that 16.3% of adults have wealth in USD of 100k to 1m.
Did I get something wrong?
Edit: At the bottom of the investopedia article, they have the sources and since they only have references about the US, I believe I can safely say that I my assumption that the intro was talking about the entire world was wrong.
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I think you’re underestimating how poor most of the globe is. This study is also on wealth, not just income
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Oh, I was just talking about if you averaged things globally. Of course it’s much higher than that if you limit the scope to specific countries or groups.
The calculations in the site you linked is more of a creative accounting approach for feel good purposes. Nothing serious there imo.
It’s also the rich classes in “developing” countries.
Let’s not forget an important factor: within the span of 30 years.
I spent too many hours yesterday trying to find the relevant info without taking this into consideration.
Countries that emit are top emitters, shocking news
For anyone wondering, the wealthiest top 1% alone accounts for one-fifth of warming.
Link to original study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x
Full abstract:
Spoiler
Climate injustice persists as those least responsible often bear the greatest impacts, both between and within countries. Here we show how GHG emissions from consumption and investments attributable to the wealthiest population groups have disproportionately influenced present-day climate change. We link emissions inequality over the period 1990–2020 to regional climate extremes using an emulator-based framework. We find that two-thirds (one-fifth) of warming is attributable to the wealthiest 10% (1%), meaning that individual contributions are 6.5 (20) times the average per capita contribution. For extreme events, the top 10% (1%) contributed 7 (26) times the average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 6 (17) times more to Amazon droughts. Emissions from the wealthiest 10% in the United States and China led to a two- to threefold increase in heat extremes across vulnerable regions. Quantifying the link between wealth disparities and climate impacts can assist in the discourse on climate equity and justice.
That’s huge. That means that if you’re in the tenth percentile of income/emissions, you might well be emitting less than the global average.
I say this because it’s true if you make the assumption of exponential decay. Their data isn’t accurate enough to check that assumption, but it’s the most parsimonious one, and in this case the function that fits would be:
E = 29.5 e^(-P*0.36)Where E is the emission fraction and P is the percentile as an integer. This results in the table below, with the numbers in bold the ones that the function is fit to.
Percentile Emissions fraction Cumulative emissions fraction 1st 20.6% 20.6% 2nd 14.4% 35.0% 3rd 10.0% 45.0% 4th 7.0% 52.0% 5th 4.9% 56.9% 6th 3.4% 60.3% 7th 2.4% 62.7% 8th 1.7% 64.4% 9th 1.2% 65.6% 10th 0.8% 66.4% Since a percentile is 1% wide, an emission fraction of 0.8% is below the global average.
This assumption doesn’t fit with the remaining 90% of the population, but it makes sense that the exponential relationship would slow down as people maintain a “poverty line” minimum footprint. If this consideration already affects the 10th percentile, it’s possible the 10th percentile still emits more than the global average.
(fig.3)
No. It’s not 2/3 of climate change caused by wealthy bastards, it’s 100%.
Non-wealthy people don’t own factories spewing heat and trash into the air. Non-wealthy people might own cars, but they don’t design and build those cars to constantly spew dangerous & deadly emissions — wealthy people are responsible for that, and for the lack of a healthier, greener choice for transportation. It’s wealthy bastards who’ve fought against regulations reducing pollution, wealthy bastards who oppose public transit, and wealthy bastards who profit from the climate change that’ll eventually kill the rest of us.
Fuck if I’m causing 1/3 of climate change. Fuck, no.
Wealthy bastards make sure environmental protection is a punchline, and wrap everything in plastic like Laura Palmer. The rich are at the heart of every vile thing that’s being done to the planet. Virtually all of man-made climate change is caused by rich bastards.
If you choose to eat meat, you’re causing loads of climate damage.
Lots of non wealthy people are responsible for a non-zero amount of damage.
Totally bogus. The effect of one person eating a roast beef sandwich and side of chips is so nearly nothing it rounds to nothing. Saying, “If you choose to eat meat, you’re causing loads of climate damage,” is bald-faced misinformation.
The average person kills about 100 animals per year. If you sum up all if that for all the 90% of the population, thats very not negligible
You can’t really blame individuals for society issues. If I drop dead tomorrow, the global emissions won’t change. Still the same amount of cows, still the same amount of cars on the road, still the same governments and policies.
Not saying we shouldn’t do anything as individuals, we definitely should, we can all do better. But you can’t blame any one random individual for any of these issues, imo(non multimillionaire, I mean). Feels so wrong.
If all the poor people drop dead tomorrow, the emissions will change. And the number of animals will decrease.
You do have an impact. It is no negligible.
It is not sufficient to cut the emissions of rich people to zero. It is necessary and the majority, but all of us need to stop putting GHG into the atmosphere
Right, but I’m not all the poor people. And I can’t control them either. Yes, if everyone stopped eating meat, we’d stop farming them and emissions would drop. But that’s unrealistic, never gonna happen. So yes, my impact in negligible.
And I’m not saying I won’t do anything because my impact is negligible. I still recycle and encourage others to do the same and so on. But realistically speaking, I’m nobody. What I do doesn’t change anything. At most I may have influenced 10 other people to be eco friendly. Still didn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things. But maybe once a few more million people do the same we’ll be ok. We’ll see.
I can’t control them either…that’s unrealistic, never gonna happen.
That’s exactly what the coal company said about the oil company.
I do agree we need to tax meat and subsidize cheap proteins like beans, tvp, and seitan
If I drop dead tomorrow, the global emissions won’t change
Neither will global emissions change if jeff bezos drops dead tomorrow. The companies are all public and will still be led by a board of directors.
And the private jet flights and the monster boat are nothing?
And what about all the money he gave to Trump and to other politicians to influence policy decisions?
And the private jet flights and the monster boat are nothing?
I’m gonna be honest - yes. Those things are nothing in the grand scheme.
And what about all the money he gave to Trump and to other politicians to influence policy decisions?
You can’t put a number on these kind of things, so I’m not going to count that. Otherwise, everyone that is buying nestle products is exploiting third world countries.
The thing is, he’s got the power to influence the world for the better but he’s not doing it. “Part of the problem or part of the solution” applies to him at the very least a thousand fold.
Yes, true, but that doesn’t mean he’s overwhelmingly responsible for climate change.
Yeah, obviously you can’t blame one individual. Only a ton of individuals in aggregate. That’s why its important to change the behavior of large swathes of people.
Special Surprise: that probably includes you and me.
I don’t have a car and I don’t eat meat, so it definitely doesn’t include me.
Oh, do you happen to have a military? That’s actually a big chunk of the reason Americans have such a high carbon footprint… That and an entire society built around making it almost impossible to live without a car.
Epic! I hope to be able to ditch my car in the next two years, and I’ve mostly stopped eating meat too, and I haven’t turned my AC/Heat on since February (and then not for long.) I feel like taking the kind of steps needed to drastically reduce your share of emissions is easier than a lot of people make it out to be. (Though obviously it depends on life circumstances.)
That’s two of the big three sources of household emissions. There’s a third one though: which is heating and cooling.
I’d look at getting those off of fossil fuels next, and doing what you can to get electricity from renewables.
Same!
