Billionaires and climate change

scientists are warning that human economic activity has overshot most of the planetary boundaries and is now destabilising the Earth system.
We’ve entered a zone of dangerous uncertainty and are at risk of triggering potentially irreversible tipping points.

When it comes to ecological impact, we know that the richer you are, the more damage you do. This pattern is evident across a wide range of indicators.

The richest 10% of the world’s population is responsible for more than half the world’s total carbon emissions since 1990

An individual in the richest 1% emits 100 times more than an individual in poorest half of the human population.

it’s not only that rich people consume more stuff than everybody else, but also because the stuff they consume is more energy-intensive: huge houses, big cars, private jets, business-class flights, long-distance holidays, luxury imports and so on. And it’s not only their consumption that matters – it’s also their investments. When the rich have more money than they can possibly spend, which is virtually always the case, they tend to invest the excess in expansionary industries that are quite often ecologically destructive, like fossil fuels and mining.

how income correlates with ecological breakdown should make us think twice about how our culture idolises rich people. There is nothing worth celebrating about their excesses. In an era of ecological breakdown, excess is literally deadly

Reference: thecorrespondant.com