1y ago

America's richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds

www.cnn.com America's richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds | CNN Business

America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.

News @kbin.social

www.cnn.com /2023/08/17/business/rich-americans-climate-footprint-emissions/index.html

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134 comments

Every day we're here just to learn billionaires & families should be crushed and their wealth redistributed amongst third world countries.
- That would just make other billionaires somewhere else. The problem is the system not the people
  
  He did not say "once". I think they're suggesting a systematic approach. I periodic Purge if you will. Like some shitty movie.
  
  Yup, the problem is firmly the system, but suggesting a worldwide change to socialism/communism is less "palatable" and believable by the average person.
  So "eat the rich" is a decent compromise for a comment not intended to approach any sort of complex answer, while still being a move in a better direction than suggesting things to continue as they are.
- Why advocate for structural changes when we can meme fedpost about a violent solution?
  
  Redistributing the wealth of billionaires is already part of a good structural change, it'll remove from them power they'd use to continue the exploitation of the people. You can substitute "crush" by destitute and incarcerate them if you'd prefer, as long as the wealth isn't on the hands of the few anymore.

If anyone is asking how do we pay to solve the climate crisis. I think its pretty clear who should be paying.
- This is true for almost anything. Major corporations, and the investors that profit off of them, pay so little in taxes compared to the average citizen. Instead, their money is devoted to lobbying and setting up careful corporate international glass houses so they don’t have to pay the taxes they should. We can push much harder on tackling social issues, but the top 10% don’t exist in society, they lord over it
  
  the top 10% don’t exist in society, they lord over it
  I think you mean they run it
- How much money does the top 1% have and how much do you think it will cost to clean up the world? Those two numbers are not even within 3 years of global GDP dipshit.
  
  Last year they increased their wealth by 8 trillion usd. Since 2021 their combined wealth is 42 trillion usd. (Thats twice as much as the rest 99% combined)
  It is estimated that to fix the climate crisis it takes between 300 billion - 50 trillion usd. So they actually could do that.
  And than there is the matter of comparing personal profit of a few. To the entire value produced by a country. Which is a really dumb comparison.
  But you might know that the gdp of the us in 2021 was around 23 trillion.
  So your the intellectual floor gymnast, dipshit.
- China and India, but you won’t admit it.
  
  Who are the factories of the west and emit co2 for our products.
  
  The U.S. military is the largest single producer of emissions on the planet.

So fucking sick of billionaires
- What do you even do when you exceed 100 Millions?
  They must be mentally sick in some way "just one mooare billion pleaaase"
  
  If you have over a billion dollars, you could spend every waking moment shovelling money into a fire and you would still have over a billion dollars when you die
  
  I imagine its just a prick waving contest between the rich. They just compare the number in their account to the others and want to have a bigger number.

The US subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of 600B per year. You pay for pollution with your taxes.

We need a 95% tax bracket for anyone that makes more than a few million/year.
- And a wealth tax for people having more value than like 10 millions (or less actually).
- A few million/year is a reasonable amount of money for a (highly) successful person to make. A wealth tax for people making over a billion or just $100M per year is enough to fix a lot of the problems in this country without destroying the "American dream"
  
  The way I see it, if you make enough money to buy a nice, moderate house in California or Hawaii once per year, you are already making too much money. My cutoff would probably be closer to $2-3M... though I'd be willing to go higher if paired with an annual "wealth tax"... say, if you have a value of over - for example - $20M (incl. stocks and any other non-liquid assets) you must pay 20% of any excess value in taxes annually. That would be on top of the 95% multimillionaire income tax.

TL;DR: one doesn't become rich by respecting others.

Anyone else just feel like we should eat the rich?
- I think it's way overdue.
- On one hand, yes, on the other, eating shit isn't very appealing.
- Won't stop the meat producing companies or the oil companies from existing - that just moves the emissions of them to their heirs.
  That metric is really bad - as long as there's demand for gas or meat those emissions need to be attached to someone - and attaching them to the owner just takes away all responsibility from everyone and tells them that they don't have to change anything.
  If BP would Stop producing oil tomorrow the price would probably jump but then other companies would step in and fill that gap and nothing would've changed pollution wise.
  
  I'm not advocating for it, but I will say there are no Romanovs around, so it's not 100% that it's always the heir next.
- Envy and jealousy will get you nowhere in life. Strive to do better. Maybe join the upper classes through hard work and sacrifice?
  
  "You don't understand. Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters."
  — Rom
  
  We already work and strife more than those upper classes ever would in their entire life.
  How about those upper classes pay their due taxes instead of using loopholes to be a leach on society?
  Either that or we eat them.
  
  Thanks for the suggestion I just became a billionaire

This is a piss poor metric. It is not what these people personally emit but what they emit by all the companies that they may own. Even though those companies produce products you and me consume.
In other words if I am a massive farmer and in the ten percent wealth category, my carbon footprint includes all the food produced and you consume from my farm.
- I feel that I see more and more articles that give the false impression that rich are the only people we should put a pressure for pollution. This will give more and more people the illusion that they can pollute because their pollution is very minor compared to the pollution of the rich.
  The reality is while richer people pollute more. The ratio of pollution between a rich and a normal person is not comparable to the ratio of the wealth difference.
  In fact, for pollution, everyone effort has a real effect.
  More precisely I read an article that made it clear that if a super rich has 100000x more money, they will pollute directly only 40x more than most people. (the number are probably wrong but the order of magnitude is correct).
  This mean that pollution is not just for the rich, but for everyone. And your personal effort count.
  
  Pollution is a truly a systemic problem, not a personal responsibility problem, even for the wealthiest heaviest polluters. It certainly doesn't help when people treat their surroundings like trashcans, but that will always pale in comparison to the scale of pollution produced by industry.
  The reason wealthy people are still the issue is that they have an insane overabundance of control over industry, governments, and economic systems, and that control is currently being wielded irresponsibly.
  The only way for non-wealthy people to truly fight climate change is collective action. The top 1% on the other hand could damn near personally begin reconstructing problematic parts of our polluting economic systems, but they simply aren't motivated to do so because that wouldn't increase their capital, at least not as much as the way they are currently behaving does. They are only motivated by increasing their wealth, apparently, based on how they behave.
- Or if I'm in the 10% bracken and have invested most of that money in the Stock-Market I'd get a fraction of the emissions of all companies in the world?
  I feel like those articles are just so people have someone else to point fingers at and feel as if they don't have to change anything themselves.
  Sure personal responsibility alone won't help without laws but those laws won't happen if people show that they are behind those measures.
  I want to see a politician trying to triple the gas prices and the prices on meat and see that politician be elected.
  People really think they are existing in a vacuum and companies are only polluting for the fun of it - but don't accept how the by far biggest contribution is the average Livestyle of everyone...
  Banning private jets and things like that is probably a good idea to get people behind you but I feel as if it's mostly a gesture compared to a law that would slash meat consumption in half or tackle the fact that everyone sees going everywhere in their truck when biking or walking would've worked fine. The single person doesn't have power but everyone together has and politicians want to get elected so they only tackle an issue when they feel the people are behind them.
  
  Thanks this is so correct. Sure the wealthiest personally have a carbon footprint that is likely a factor larger than the average person but overall they are a consist of a fraction of the population. You could eliminate every single Uber rich person and we still would be emitting nearly the same level of GHGs.
  I want to point out that the average person in Western society has a carbon footprint a factor larger that that of the average person in say China or India. And we only make up about 20 percent of the population.
  Point being if we point the finger at industry that is making products we consume, then it is a certainty global warming will only increase. The only way we can tackle this is if the average person significantly reduces our consumption. Doubling fuel prices thru taxes would be a good start. Good luck with that though. People in the US went nuts when gas hit 5 dollars a gallon last year.
- The study's primary metric appears to include both supplier and producer emissions proportional to income and investments. What alternative do you suggest?
  
  You are responsible for the entire carbon footprint from ground to your mouth/back/use. Not the person that worked to provide it to you.
  I am not discounting the problem of wealth inequality. That is a complete seperate issue. But you don't get to transfer your carbon footprint onto other entities because they made the product for you.
- No
- One point of view could be that since these billionaires are the ones financially benefitting from the companies, that they should also be the ones paying the true cost of the production.
  It's true that the consumers are consuming, but why are the companies making products without cleaning up after their production? Why are billionaires allowed to extract money out of this and leave the environment in an irreparable state.
  Consumers would probably prefer that their money went to the product including all the associated costs of producing it, but consumers don't get that choice, because the company owners extract the money for themselves.
  
  Consumers would lose their shit if they had to pay that additional cost of all the associated costs. Just look at the US response to fuel prices when has hit 5 dollars a gallon. And that was due to supply and demand issues. Can you imagine the outcry if the government put a real tax on the carbon component of every produce? Hell had likely would be 8 dollars a gallon. Your milk prices would like double overnight. Not only would transportation costs increase but it would be taxed for the carbon component of animal to your mouth. All good and clothing and necessities would have to increase significantly.

There's a steep cliff between the 95% and the .01%. I wonder what proportion is just the .01
- The income of the top 1% alone – households making more than $550,000 – was linked to 15% to 17% of this pollution.
  The report also identified “super-emitters.” They are almost exclusively among the wealthiest top 0.1% of Americans, concentrated in industries such as finance, insurance and mining, and produce around 3,000 tons of carbon pollution a year. To put that in perspective, it’s estimated people should limit their carbon footprint to around 2.3 tons a year to tackle climate change.
  
  Thank you for finding that for me

CO² tax on oil and fuel production i say.

Got it. Eating the rich for protecting humanity by protecting the climate.

40% seems low.
- Probably because not all of the CEOs all of the enormous corporations, or leaders of the top polluting nations, are in that top 10‰. 10% is just a nice number to use, and I expect that if they went with 15 or 20% then the corresponding amount of pollution they're responsible for would jump up significantly.
  
  That makes sense. I apparently can't do math this morning.
- They are pulling up the entire average they have 40% of. They are emitting 6x more than the bottom 90% per capita, so that 6x figure should have been the metric to focus on
- Jesus Christ. Do you know how much the US outputs compared to China and India? Educate yourself instead of following the group think. Seriously, the US is the only country on the planet that is actually going to achieve the Kyoto Agreement and we didn’t even fucking sign up for it. The US literally leads the entire fucking world in reduction of greenhouse gasses and development of green tech and you fucking clowns just sit here and bag on the rich… what a sad bunch of morons you are.
  
  Not even the rich. Apparently workers earning $90k per year is enough to qualify as enemies to these people.
  The rich aren't people who work for a living. The rich are the bourgeousie who live parasitically off the rest of us. The people who can buy citizenship to nearly any country they desire. The people with multimillion dollars doomsday bunker communities.

The picture they paint in this article, of the ultra rich with their private jets and yachts, does not align with the statistic presented in the title.
the wealthiest 10% in the US, households making more than about $178,000
I'm sure many of you know people in this group. Two adults each making 90k a year is enough to break into the 10%. And clearly they're not flying around in private jets.
- That's true, but most of my social group fits into this definition and the majority fly commercial 6 - 12+ times a year, all around the globe, either for vacation or business travel. They almost all own personal vehicles, replaced every 5 - 10 years, well before the end of life of the vehicle. I live in Colorado and it's common for this class to own/rent a second home or condo in the mountains and take multi-hour drives to those places on the weekend. Those lifestyle choices produce massive amounts of CO2 relative to individuals who otherwise live generally identical lives.
  It doesn't take extravagances like private jets to contribute outsized emissions.

They may as well be polluting methane gas because they're so full of shit

but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
Lemme go ahead and roll my eyes here. Yes, American Airlines produces a significant percentage of the world's greenhouse emissions. But they burn that fuel for the passengers, not just for the benefit of shareholders. Same with ExxonMobil, BP, etc.
Consumption is what drives pollution. Investments to profit off of that consumption is secondary.
- Their biggest success is convincing common folks it's out fault.
- Consumption driven by advertising based on Edward Bernays work, which explicitly intends to create fissures within people and then sell them cures to the fissures they created,m. Just disallowing advertising would have a substantial effect on consumption.

As much as I understand the hate towards rich people governments are just as much at fault for subsidising, directly funding and giving land to those companies in the first place for people to be able to make money off them.
- Because capitalist governments serve the capitalist class
- Yeah those governments totally have no input from the rich whatsoever lmao
- Yeah, governments are totally just giving this shit out with no compulsion from the rich.

A long time ago, this kind of reckless excess moved the French to remove the top 10% of their ruling class' bodies.
- Pretty sure almost everyone in the US is top 40% globally
  
  That's an absolute worthless comparison and you know it

This is the best summary I could come up with:
America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
That gave a carbon footprint for each dollar of economic activity in the US, which the researchers linked to households using population survey data that showed the industries people work for and their income from wages and investments.
The report also identified “super-emitters.” They are almost exclusively among the wealthiest top 0.1% of Americans, concentrated in industries such as finance, insurance and mining, and produce around 3,000 tons of carbon pollution a year.
Kimberly Nicholas, associate professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden, who was not involved in the report, said the study helps reveal how closely income, especially from investments, is tied to planet-heating pollution.
Sometimes when people talk about ways to tackle the climate crisis, they bring up population control, said Mark Paul, a political economist at Rutgers University who was also not involved in the study.
Globally, the planet-heating pollution produced by billionaires is a million times higher than the average person outside the world’s wealthiest 10%, according to a report last year from the nonprofit Oxfam.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- Wouldn’t insurance be one of the lowest carbon footprints? They don’t really make or manufacture anything, minimal fleet presence (like adjusters cars and what not, not like delivery trucks or semis)?
  I could see their investments maybe being problematic by investing in other companies that are heavy polluters, but idk maybe I’m missing something? Seems like they wouldn’t have much of a footprint compared to others at their size and scale.
  
  I'd like to buy carbon emission insurance. If it stays above safe levels, I get paid. If it goes below safe levels, I pay them. They adjust rates offered based on its likelihood. Then they'd have a strong incentive to fund various activities to reduce pollution.
- It’s a strange accounting method, that almost completely reflects wealth distribution and ignores carbon.
  For instance, you might say childhood obesity is a problem, then measure people’s investments in fast food as a measure of their contribution to the problem. And find that it’s the same people at fault, at almost the exact same percentage!
- It’s a stretch to say that because they invest in a company, that they “produce” the greenhouse gases that that company emits.
  Yeah, they could invest elsewhere but it’s just disingenuous to say they’re responsible for all those carbon emissions.
  
  I can see how it's strange on the surface, but ultimately the carbon emissions wouldn't be there if the polluting activity was not funded. So to whom would the carbon emissions be attributed otherwise? Just the CEO?
  
  If they invest and demand the biggest profit by countering greenification policies so they get more money as shareholder, then they definitely are responsible for the companies pollution.

Feel like some people here are being emotionally invested thinking this study is a sort of a blame game encouraging us to berate the wealthy individuals for their investments. I can't say whether the researchers had this in mind or not but from reading the study it looks like an aim of devising this metric was to figure out a strategy of investment taxation to deter wealthy people from investing in industries that are ravaging the planet:
By linking GHG emissions with the incomes it enables our work has quantified the scale of emissions inequality in U.S. society and the extreme and growing concentration of emissions among very wealthy households. It also offers some suggestions on how accelerated decarbonization and revenue generation might occur, such as an income or shareholder-based carbon tax that reflects the GHG intensity of one’s income sources or financial assets. This is distinct from consumer facing carbon taxes that rely on individuals decarbonizing the economy by shifting their consumption to less GHG intensive goods and services and thereby encouraging companies to respond to their new preferences. A consumer-facing approach assumes individual consumers have the knowledge, financial resources, and agency to shift spending and the power to alter corporate decision making on the GHG intensity of their supply chain and operations. An alternative income or shareholder facing carbon tax puts pressure on executives and large shareholders (i.e. those with the most economic and corporate power) to act in their own self-interest and decarbonize their supply chain and operations in order to reduce taxes on their compensation and investments. Recent work has calculated that a climate inspired wealth tax could indeed be an effective tool to raise revenue for adaptation and mitigation efforts [52, 53].
- But how will I be offended? You're making way too much sense.
- GTFO with your economics! We'll just solve all externalities with social pressure. /s

That's a complicated situation because if not rich people, we'll see other rich people in the same situation, like I don't think world's biggest companies will stop existing anytime soon, even if healthy eco alternatives get bigger investiment in the future.
- It's not really that complicated; Pigouvian taxes are basic economics. We don't need more investment in eco alternatives as much as less investment in pollution.

Balance it out with some planet-cooling pollution
- Ah yes, operation dark storm.
  https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Operation_Dark_Storm
  
  I have been obsessed with The Matrix for multiple decades now and never knew that Neil Gaiman wrote a graphic novel about a guy pulled out of the Matrix to kill aliens. $50 hardcover collection on the way, thank you for sending me to see how far the rabbit hole goes!!

And the thumbnail is a picture of a nuclear plant......
- That's a coal fired power plant. Specifically the John Amos power plant in W. Virginia.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Amos_Power_Plant
  
  Ah, sorry. Completely misspoke.

And I'll wager my left eye there'll still be western capitalist-sympathizers(because they themselves are not capitalists, as they own no capital nor any means of production, mass or otherwise) having themselves a jolly old wankfest about how we shouldn't be having a good long think about the Robespierre method

what percentage of all jobs/economic growth is that 10% responsible for (including downstream supply chains)?

Every time I see such evaluations I get this picture of an economically illiterate person just making assumptions from some statistics they are unable to comprehend. A bit like with electrical engineering.
And in any case the useful metric would be pollution per dollar (or per joule) spent by a person, not totals. I don't think I have to explain why, it's obvious.
- Why would capital have anything to do with it?
  A private jet that pollutes 1.2 metric ton for a flight where a regular diesel car would pollute 0.3 metric ton. Isn't going to be better just because the private jet costs 4 million while the car is only 30 thousands.
  Pollution is pollution, doesn't matter how much it costs. The planet doesn't care. It will die anyway and take us with it.
  So please, tell us why it is "obvious" to you.
  
  It is going to be better because of there being much fewer private jets than regular diesel cars.
  Pollution is pollution, doesn’t matter how much it costs. The planet doesn’t care. It will die anyway and take us with it.
  Damn fscking right it doesn't. However, "cost" is a human concept, and humans do care. So if you want to reduce pollution, you'll choose in favor of less pollution for the same amount of activity, and that is measured in dollars.
  So please, tell us why it is “obvious” to you.
  I just have.
- No because assets and their place in capitalist enterprise represent control. I.e. an owner has fundamental rights to use workers according to the owners needs, and the owner also has the option to advertise and otherwise facitate propagand and take part in political process, including lobbying and corruption to affect circumstances outside of their direct control for example customer demand and government regulation, all of this control is proportional to the absolute wealth of that person family or group.
  Obviously this is not to say the owners are in full control of all of their workers and assets individually, it's just that they decide the system that all workers must use and this has an obvious effect on the things these workers do.
  So the useful metric is certainly not pollution per $/person but one that is proportional in some way to the total wealth.
  Sure this control can be mutually beneficial for the owner and the society at large, but it's pretty clear now that with fossil enterprise especially, this is not the case, control gained from extracting an unfortunate life necessity from the ground, a resource that is set to destroy life on the planet as we know it, should not be able to be used for anything but to replace itself as quickly as possible, the tactic for the last 50 years from these owners was the opposite.
  
  You are mixing up the correct metric for a person and the correct weight for a person .

Wait, how is that possible when China is responsible for 50% of the carbon emissions? This doesn’t add up.
- From the article:
  They found the wealthiest 10% in the US, households making more than about $178,000, were responsible for 40% of the nation’s human-caused, planet-heating pollution.
  So this only focuses on emissions from the US
  
  This, and most of China's carbon emissions come from the production of goods for the rest of the world, so they're not the only ones "responsible" for those 50%.
  
  households making more than about $178,000
  So that's a household, meaning it likely is two adults working plus children. I would like to see this broken down more granularly - what percentage is due to the top 1% or top 0.01%, and is it due to investments or private jets, yachts, and recreational space exploration.
- I understood it as they are responsible for 40% of americas pollution.
- The title is clearly referring to America's polution. Presumably the US only.
- Facts. Good luck getting them to do anything about it. Nah, we’ll just stick it to the USA taxpayers and working classes. No more petrol cars, power equipment, gas stoves AC, etc. Oh, and you can’t own a single family home either with an acre of land. Nope. We can build a high rise apartment complex there instead. Anything else?
  Climate change…. What a farce.
  
  Yeah we should definitely keep doing what we're doing. It's been working so well. /s
  Total farce indeed. That's why all the world's heat records are shattered to smithereens this year. Yep, we should absolutely focus on sucking Trump's cock every waking second of every day because I'll be goddamned if I care about anything but that. Yummmmmmmmm trump jizzzz, oh also dodge rams rule, especially the fact that you can place a kindergarten class in front of them and the driver not see them, plus CITIES ARE SCARY!!!!!! How dare people move out of poverty and into a middle class life by moving to them!!!!!!! Don't they know there's minorities there?!?! LiBrUl RuN sTaTeS aRe HeLlScApEs tHaT aLl GoT buRnEd To ThE gRoUnD bY bLM mArXiStS!1!1!1!1
  /s
  PS. CoMmUnIsM iS bAd, wHaTeVeR iT iS
  PPS, you can go back to reddit now. People (or bots) with your disgusting ass 1830s viewpoints aren't really smiled on here on Lemmy...

Sounds like a conservative nummber

I imagine a huge chunk of the rest 60% is CCP's doing.
- 29% incase you were wondering
- Nice work displaying your ignorance
- I know a lot of folks have axes to grind, but you really don’t have to pull out your whetstone everywhere.

134 comments