ITT: people who don't realize that the article is talking about them because they're either in that 1% or damn close to it.
Yeah, 60k/year per person is the top 1% globally. That's about 60% of the us if I'm doing my math right.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
60% of the US population is like 200 million. 1% of the global population is 80 million. Your maths is way off.
I'd assume something closer to 6% of the US are in the top 1%.
Oh the second source was household income rather than individual, putting the percentage at about 37% of us households are in the globally top 1%.
Still doesn't add up. 37% of the US population is 120 million. 1% of the global population is still 80 million.
Are you comparing US household income to global individual income? If that's the case I can see your percentages working, but that comparison doesn't make much sense so I'm still lost.
Yup most of the Western world is in the top 1 percent. The rest of the Western world benefits from it.
It's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me.
Quoting Taylor Swift is.... an interesting choice when talking about climate changes.
Didn't her recent tour require 90+ semi trucks just to go from city to city? Not even going to mention all the emissions that result from whenever they have to travel by plane.
Yes, popular music acts that tour are a HUGE part of the problem.
Also, my bad I'm not tryna harp on you just because I recognized a song lyric. I'm a Taylor Swift fan myself. Well, more of a chiefs fan. And by value of the transitive property....
Edit: also apparently all air travel only accounts for about 2% of emissions. So while my point isnt technically wrong it's missing the forest for the trees
Didn’t her recent tour require 90+ semi trucks just to go from city to city? Not even going to mention all the emissions that result from whenever they have to travel by plane.
Yes, popular music acts that tour are a HUGE part of the problem
They absolutely are not. 90 trucks is nothing.
At any given time there are millions of semis (2.97 million total) driving the streets. Literally every single thing you've ever purchased in your life has been on a semi.
90 trucks driving for a couple months is not significant.
Honestly 90 semi trucks are a tiny problem. So once we're down to pop acts, we solved climate issues already. Long solved.
It's funny how often people who are in the global 5-10% talk about how clueless the 1% of the West is, while being so clueless about their own wealth.
The world's population is about 8.1 billion. The top 1% of that is 81 million. The population of the G7 (a reasonable substitute for the richest countries) is approx 800 million. So, if you're in the top 10% and in a G7 country, you're in that top 1%.
Top 10% income in the US is approx $170k per year. That's mid-level manager wages.
Are you not conflating top 10% of wealthy people with top 10% of wealth? Looking at these differently vastly changes the results, e.g.:
Of course, in the real world numbers are much more skewed and you have hundreds of millions in developing nations at the bottom making literal pennies a day, bringing the "top 10%" of wealth (not top 10% of wealthy people) to include some single mom making 45k in the US.
I understand the distinction you're making, but in this case we're talking about the top 1% of wealthiest people. From the article:
The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019
Also, the phrase "the top 10% of wealth" doesn't really make any sense. How can wealth itself have percentiles? A percentile shows the percentage of scores that a particular score surpassed. So, the wealthiest 10% means people whose wealth is higher than 90% of other people. What would the top 10% of wealth be?
I think the point you're trying to make is that the top 0.01% are much, much wealthier than the typical person in the top 1%, and probably one individual in that top 0.01% probably contributes as much CO2 as hundreds or thousands of people who are merely in the top 1%. And, I fully agree. But, this article has put the cutoff at the top 1%, which includes both Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates but also your dentist, the guy who owns the Chevy dealership, and the woman who manages the HR department.
Two things can be true. In this case, it's that the ultra-wealthy with private jets, multiple houses, etc. live lifestyles that put out vast amounts of CO2. But, also, a fairly average American lifestyle is also very CO2 intensive, compared to how a poor person in India or Cameroon lives.
The cover photo is a jet plane but remember, US$140,000/year is the threshold they're quoting in the article so the reality is more like a decent car or two and a house in a nicer area will drop you into that range.
1% of the world's population is 80,000,000 people.
There is too much variance in a population that large to make any reasonable statements or suggest adjustments.
We already know that people living on pennies per day aren't the problem.
But shouldn't it be easier to adjust the lifestyle of 80 million people rather than 8 billion?
And there are a few easy ones almost everyone in the 1% can chip in: reduce meat consumption, don't fly, buy local and don't buy single use items
In the US, 7% of transportation emissions are commercial air travel, while 58% are passenger cars.
Flying is worse per-trip than driving, but car centric infrastructure is worse than flying.
Similarly, what you eat is way more important than how far it traveled. Most agricultural emissions happen at the farm.
It's actually better for the environment to grow tomatoes in Florida or Mexico and ship them to NYC in the fall or winter than to grow tomatoes locally in a heated greenhouse.
Is that individually or per household? This article gives 130k per household or 60k per individual.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich
Exactly. I wonder what the top 0.5% emit, or the top 0.1% emit. 140k is just a married couple living in a city. But people that live in a city can take public transit or walk to the store, therefore they won’t be contributing that much to these huge emissions.
ITT: People who don't understand cradle to grave manufacturing. When I decide to make a product I take on responsibility for that product until it is no longer in use and has been properly disposed of. That is ethical manufacturing as decided by industry.
If your product is transportation then you are responsible for the emissions created by transporting. The consumer gets no say in it. Even if they were extremely well researched, which no consumer has that type of resources, they are still not privy to all of a businesses practices at every level.
Assholes in this thread want to push off all the responsibility on to consumers, as if being a consumer is unethical. This is a scapegoat for manufacturers who don't want to foot the bill because their product is not viable if you consider the all the corners they cut.
Don't believe me, look up any lawsuit that deals with any superpac. Businesses are responsible.
It feels disingenuous at best to lump in people making $60k/year with Jeff Bezos and other billionaires. Just twelve billionaires account for 2,100,000 homes worth of emissions, and that's only the raw output of their travel and other direct expenses: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide
Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.
Twelve of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of 2m homes, ...
“Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
“Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels. ...
The carbon footprints of the investments were calculated by examining the equity stakes that the billionaires held in companies. Estimates of the carbon impact of their holdings was calculated using the company’s declarations on scope 1 emissions – direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company – and scope 2, indirect emissions.
Most of that isn't their direct expenses, but from the businesses they own. Their actual travel and direct expenses are a small fraction of the emissions stated in that:
A superyacht kept on permanent standby generates about 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, according to the analysis.
“The emissions of the superyachts are way above anything else,”
The average carbon footprint in the US is 16 tons. 7000/16 = 437.5. The emissions of these billionaires is mostly not private jets and super yachts, and the emissions from super yachts and private jets are a very small percentage of the US's total transportation emissions.
The emissions of these billionaires is mostly not private jets and super yachts, and the emissions from super yachts and private jets are a very small percentage of the US’s total transportation emissions.
I'd say their personal emissions for their luxuries are still significantly several times the average person.
Sure. In terms of directly produced emissions, most billionaires emit somewhere between 100-1000 times as much as the average American.
Which, yeah, isn't all that equitable. But there just aren't that many billionaires, and there's hundreds of millions of average Americans.
It's not like wealth, where the richest 735 billionaires have as much wealth as the poorest 166 million Americans.
Yeah, 1% of 8.1 billion is 81 million. So, it's roughly the top 10% of population of the wealthiest countries.
That includes both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but also middle managers in marketing, astronomers, HR managers, air traffic controllers, etc.
Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.
Don't forget that you have more than one finger. You have fingers to spare to point blame at those who deserve it, and few of us in first world countries don't.
so we cut cut emissions by 60% with a guillotine
Or... we can just double the efford for maximizing gains and see introducing 2% with guillotine give as profit?
No shit?
Of course the 1% are accounting for the majority of personal emissions, they are the only ones who can afford to.
What I want to know is how much of the total emissions are non private in origin.
eat the rich! a bearded man once told us
I'm now a Marxist-Cannibalist.
Wouldn't eating the rich be survival cannibalism at this point?
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 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.
Are you flying around the world on PJs constantly?
All air travel is only 2% of carbon emissions.
when you own 90% of the wealth and resources, i'm kind of shocked that is "poorest 90%"
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says.
For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide.
Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans.
“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction and it is those who can least afford it who are paying the highest price,” said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser.
The extravagant carbon footprint of the 0.1% – from superyachts, private jets and mansions to space flights and doomsday bunkers – is 77 times higher than the upper level needed for global warming to peak at 1.5C.
Oxfam International’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, said: “Not taxing wealth allows the richest to rob from us, ruin our planet and renege on democracy.
The original article contains 853 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
No shit
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