Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
‘Polluter elite’ are plundering the planet to point of destruction, says Oxfam after comprehensive study of climate inequality
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This is why I don’t believe people when they say “we don’t have an overpopulation problem, we have a distribution problem”
Because if everyone in the world had my lifestyle, we would be emitting an insane amount of carbon. And I don’t want my standard of living to go down, and in fact I want everyone to live as nicely as I do. So clearly we need fewer people.
How much of your carbon emissions are due to your quality of life and how much is due to inefficiencies/waste?
The vast bulk are from travel and meat consumption
Assuming you live in North America, travel is highly inefficient with personal cars and high airplane usage.
Meat consumption on the other hand is a lifestyle choice. Personally, if be willing to reduce mine if we stopped subsidizing the industry and therefore stopped incentivizing such high consumption.
Why are you waiting until the meat industry is no longer subsidised to reduce your meat consumption?
I'm on a budget. I eat less meat than the average North American, but I still need protein and meat is a lot less expensive than many of the alternatives, partially because we subsidize the meat industry so much.
meat consumption doesn't emit any carbon.
Meat production does, and you can't consume meat that doesn't exist.
once it's produced there's no point in not eating it
The overpopulation isn't happening in the 1%.
It makes jack shit of a difference to the environment if there is one billion or two billion starving people. They're not the ones burning carbon or eating steak.
But we want to stop those people from starving. And if we ideally lived in a world where no one is starving, emissions would go up astronomically.
Only when assuming that it's necessary to pollute as much as the 1% do to achieve a similar standard of living. It doesn't have to.
Looking at energy production, developing nations can and are skipping several decades of advances. They don't have to go through the same phases where they chop down all the trees, dig up all the coal and burn all the oil. They can go directly to renewables, because the technology already exists, and they do.
In regards to food, it's obvious that we need to advance our agricultural technology. Even just the 1% isn't sustainable. We will need to fix it regardless of whether we "want" to feed 1% or 100%, because it's a massive problem already. The times of Ol' McDonalds self-sustainable farm are long gone. It's a meat factory, and it's taking all of our resources and all of our land, and it simply shouldn't.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to address this politically because most of the population are still oblivious to how food is actually produced and how damaging it is to the environment. With how few people are actually employed in agriculture these days, it's absolutely amazing how much political support they have for their business.
On the other hand, if everyone in the world had your lifestyle the world would be much more wealthy and could make a lot of positive changes.
I want everyone to have my lifestyle
Its the thought that counts, but no thanks
Are you flying around the world on PJs constantly?
All air travel is only 2% of carbon emissions.
