From luxury yachts to private jets and supercars, the enormously destructive travel and leisure habits of the super-rich are to the fore in the latest research on the carbon gap that divides the world’s wealthiest people from everyone else. Calculations by Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and others reveal that the richest 1% produced as much carbon pollution in one year as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. Though they number just 2,600, the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires is greater than the GDP of all but two countries – the US and China. The impact on the environment of their carbon‑intensive behaviour is colossal.
But as this week’s Guardian series, the great carbon divide, has shown, outsized emissions are not only the work of this minority of the ultra-wealthy. Nor are they confined to the far larger number of individuals with a net worth of at least $1m, combined with energy‑intensive lifestyles, who social scientist Dario Kenner calls the “polluter elite”. In fact, half of all emissions are produced by the top 10% – that is, the much bigger group of about 800 million people who earn at least $40,000. While in their own countries these people are regarded as middle income or middle class, their consumption and emissions far outstrip those of 90% of the world’s inhabitants.
The environment movement has largely sought to avoid personalising the world’s carbon problem for the good reason that this plays into the hands of oil and gas producers (whether businesses or governments). The framing of global heating as primarily an issue for consumers, rather than politicians, was what lay behind BP’s creation of the carbon footprint calculator. But while lifestyle changes must not be allowed to distract from the role of governments in moving away from fossil fuels, they are too important to be ignored. Instead, policymakers of all kinds should acknowledge their role in guiding and enforcing greener choices.
To give an example: two-thirds of Norwegian households have heat pumps due to taxes on carbon heating and their government’s decision to train a workforce to install them. Norway, of course, is a small and wealthy country. But if we are serious about ending our reliance on fossil fuels, then more carbon taxes and emissions-limiting regulations are necessary – even if free-market ideologues deny this and ignore the role of subsidies and investment decisions in upholding the status quo.
The UN climate process has highlighted the already terrible impacts on the world’s poorest countries of a crisis caused primarily by developed nations. Last year a “loss and damage” fund was created to address these (though so far contributions by rich countries have fallen far short). But vital as this dimension of the climate crisis is, it is not the only one. Massive carbon inequalities exist within countries as well as between them. And these too must be reduced, by policies including progressive carbon taxes that protect the living standards of poorer people. If governments do not do this, and instead place themselves in the service of elites, there is a growing risk of a backlash derailing climate action – what Thomas Piketty, a French economist, warns could become “a gigantic yellow vest movement”. The case for climate justice, in other words, must be made at a national level as well as an international one.
