Wealthy individuals have a higher carbon footprint. A new study published in Nature Climate Change quantifies the climate outcomes of these inequalities. It finds that the world's wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of observed global warming since 1990 and the resulting increases in climate extremes such as heat waves and droughts.

“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,"

  • a9cx34udP4ZZ0@lemmy.world
    22·
    3 days ago

    How about instead of turning this issue into class warfare as well, they just point out that CORPORATIONS are driving 90% of global emissions. Said corporations love studies like this because then they can blame the population by spewing such nonsense as “well if you didn’t buy our product we wouldn’t create the emissions”.

    There you have it folks, if you just stopped eating food, global warming would be solved. It couldn’t POSSIBLY be that governemnts should create things like emissions standards to drive down pollution.

    What’s that 70% of global emissions come from just 100 companies? Nope, it’s the richest 10% of the population that need to fix this, not the corporations (which in turn would punish the .1% who make all their wealth off those companies). Joe Shmoe and his wife making a combined $100k/year need to stop driving their car and ride that bus, that’ll SURELY fix the problem.

    https://harvardpolitics.com/climate-change-responsibility/