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Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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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.
The problem here is that this research works from a Capitalist understanding of responsibility. That is to say that Besos is responsible for the emissions of Amazon, musk for space x, etc. Which means absolutely nothing. It's a bullshit number.
How else would you account for it? Am I responsible for 0.001% of Amazon's CO2 emissions because I order sometimes from them?
Industry already decided this argument and it's called cradle to grave.
I think the answer is yes.
Poor Besos cannot decide what and how he delivers. He just needs to deliver to anybody who posts an order on the website someone put up on the internet. Kinda like Santa?
He can decide, and his middle managers can decide, and you can also decide by choosing to shop from somewhere else.
How do I know which shop is the best? I don't. Neoliberal fantasies only work with an informed consumer, just like democracies only work with educated voters.
That's why you can't make consumers responsible for the emissions the suppliers emit.
The information is out there if you wanna find it. The truth is most people don't care, though. That's on us.
Misinformation is also out there unfortunately. Can't believe for instance people are still debating whether plant-based diets are better for the climate or not.
You think you're not?
I don't really have knowledge nor control over how green Amazon's delivery is. If you shift responsibility to a party that cannot make well-informed decisions, you kind of end up with the mess we currently have, no?
The whole idea of money not having a memory is a huge scheme of capitalists to get out of any kind of responsibility.
Amazon has the best logistics infrastructure of any company in the world. It is literally the most efficient system of moving goods ever known to mankind.
You are responsible for the carbon footprint of things you purchase, yes. This is why things like carbon taxes with dividends are such good ideas.
no, you're not.
Well, you're not, but your parents are.
Whoever actually buys the thing is.
wrong. the pollution from production is the fault of the producers. they can choose to do otherwise.
Gotta love commie logic lol
Have fun on Thanksgiving break.
"commie logic" is attributing culpability to the people who do things. i wonder what kind of logic wouldn't make people responsible for their own actions?
I work at a corporation. We don't do environmentally the right thing because leadership doesn't care and operation needs to be cheap. Whenever I suggest something it falls on deaf ears.
It's very obvious who can decide to change something in a company.
Weird. I work at a corporation and our entire model is built on sustainability
Not sure how this is relevant to any of this discussion tho
The point is that neither employees nor consumer can be responsible for the decisions of capitalists. And they aren't held responsible by anybody, not even by normal people like you. Come on.. connecting points here with you.
Oh no, I get it. It's just adorably wrong.
You are the person to set in motion the apparatus necessary to accomplish the task that you wanted to be accomplished.
Yes you live in this late stage capitalist hellscape with the rest of us, but that doesn't absolve you from being critical and making the best decisions in it.
The point is that the decision can't be good because no company discloses the environmental impact of a single product. So even if I had choices, I can only choose based on price. My only hope is that efficient logistics are also cheaper and better for the environment.
Yes as an overarching critique that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. My problem is that this doesn't absolve us from our responsibility. If choice A leaves trails of chemicals behind but costs less than B that leaves purity behind. I can definitely critique people who choose to get A.
Mainly because the other option is to choose to not consume. For example veganism doesn't apply to what you're saying. It's a conscious decision based on ethical values. The same thing can be true for people who don't use cars.
And even if there is a choice between lesser evils, it's still a choice of consequence.
I already don't use a car and I eat vegetarian. I've got the "individual choices" covered. The problem is that at some point you're standing in the store googling every single product and their producer to find some kind of issue with it so you can't buy it. That's not a sustainable way to live.
Okay but this also doesn't absolve you from your responsibility. At some point you're going to make a decision about where your personal boundaries in weighing your options are. And if you're not driving and eating (a lot) less animal products you're further ahead of the curve than others. But deciding when you find things unsustainable, it is still another decision.
Most people don't feel or don't see a positive difference from their choice. So they let go of their responsibilities because of it. If there is no positive impact it doesn't matter what they do, is their thinking.
While when you look in the supermarket now compared to ten years ago... Meat substitutes, vegan products, plant milks are abundant. So, things are changing, the choices people make are influential. It just isn't immediate. But even within capitalism the market is responding to changes, from the personal choices of people like you and me. It's slow and tedious, but things change.
You know why it's slow though, right? Specifically the meat industry is highly subsidized and they can undersell any vegan substitute to destroy their margin in the still small and slowly growing market. Even though meat production should clearly be more expensive than some vegan substitute.
Look: Consumer can either buy a product or they don't. I can't make producers stop using plastic for packaging. I can only not buy their products until some producer may think of a plastic free packaging. Change always comes from the top, not from the bottom.
What you're asking for is that consumer somehow know the details of how the products are produced. For example whether the chocolate they buy is from child slaves or not. Sure, you can read about it, but is it clearly declared in the store whether that specific chocolate is child slave free or not? The only action they can take is not buy the chocolate. Or they ask. The store clerk doesn't know better either. The producer doesn't have to disclose this, responds with a canned response that doesn't say yes or no.
Chocolate is one thing. That's not a necessity for every day life. But cars in the US. Smart phones almost everywhere. If you don't have them, you cannot participate in life. And we need to eat too.
Look I share the same frustrations. And true change can only come from political actions. Laws, oversight, fines, taxation, enforcement... Leaving change to the market isn't a solution to anything. We can't consume our way out of this problem.
But that's also not the point of our conversation, I'm trying to make clear that as a consumer you still bare responsibility over what you consume.
The problem is when people throw their hands up and just 'get what they need' mindlessly. That's also a choice.
When we can make choices that are clearly better and more ethical, we should. So it is on us to do the best we can, within the system we find ourselves in. We should strive for systemic (political) change outside of consumption, as well. One doesn't get nullified by the other.
This is absolutely a dog shit example of math, but in no way is anyone involved at all employing capitalist understandings of anything.
This entire study is a fiction designed to point the finger at a small subset of people.
Okay so you rather think they were doing it on purpose than doing from ideology. I have a bit more regard for people I guess
I think they're arguing entirely from ideology, but that the ideology is not at all "pro capital"
That's a mischaracterization of what it means to argue from ideology. They only have to accept the idea that ownership of the means of production means ownership of the pollution from the means of production.
Which is a. Very common and b. The only explanation through which this research makes sense without attributing malice.
The research is just bad science and sought from the start to attribute climate change to as few people as possible.
"Scientists say it's your average joe driving to work who is killing the world" doesn't sell.
https://earth.stanford.edu/news/could-going-vegan-help-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2019/09/26/vegetarian-vegan-diets-climate-change/
I believe it talk about the 1% wealthy people not the actual 1% of 8 billion.
People living in pennies per day are actually a huge part of the problem, because they by definition live in industrializing communities.
No. That's just something you made up.
"Industrializing nations" are easier to address than the nations that have already industrialized.
The momentum behind existing industry is huge. Like a coal industry that is difficult to dismantle because of regressive political leaders.
For countries with no existing infrastructure it's cheaper to go green than not.
Capitalists demand a return on their polluting industrial investments annd are the majority of the problem.
If an auto manufacturers started from zero today, they wouldn't be creating gasoline engines.
Zero emission aircraft are next but that doesn't mean the airlines are going to scrap all their existing aircraft engines and the pollution they cause.
I didn't just make this up. This is a huge problem facing the world because those nations have a right to improve for their people (and many, myself included, view developed nations as having an obligation to help these nations modernize), but we cannot allow for them to fully modernize using the processes we did or global warming is dramatically exacerbated.
This is a real, urgent, and complex problem, and real life is not a game of Civilization. You can't just start Congo further along down your tech tree and expect them to be totally green.
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.
This is my family's combined income and my god people need to stop thinking we are wealthy. I'm currently staring at a $1000 car on Facebook marketplace to hopefully save some money because I know how to fix it. I am constantly buying cheap shit to afford to live, we are not rich at all. I have more in common with a homeless person than a wealthy person.
I don't disagree with you, but relative to the rest of the world we produce a lot more pollution. If anything, there's probably a local peak at a certain income where, you know, you can afford a car but not a recent model with newer regulations, and you might have to fix it up to get it just within range for emissions testing. Stuff like that.
Anyway, it's not about quality of life, it's about pollution. I'm with you on the cost of everything, definitely.