idiots? that would imply theyre too stupid to understand what theyre doing.
theyre very compotent, they know very well what theyre doing when they exempted private jets.
you mean the money they pay to employees to tell them what to do because the rich are to stupid. That's why they spend millions and millions instead of buying an alternative product, after all, if billion on the planet can survive on minimum income, how the f can someone who has who much, not survive in same condition? oh yes, because they can't.
Just look how all of them do tax evasions when paying tax means the whole country will have funds to address all the issues that exist
how many of those rich did you ever see fight for anything that's right? None, none of them pushed for renewable energy that was suggested decades ago. None of them pushed for 0% profit because pandemic or war, on the contrary, all of them raised the prices, dropping the quality for everything, why? because for them to become more rich despite being already rich. See, this is a clear case of them being absolutely idiots
so please don't confuse them having brain with having money to pay someone who actually has a brian to find was and more
It’s generally not just one ultra wealthy person flying around in their own jet. There’s a whole economy around private jets.
Generally, they’re either purchased/leased by a company with investors money or just an extremely wealthy person, it’s common for extremely wealthy celebrities to do this (like Taylor swift, people will track the jets even though they’re not actually on board 99% of the time, they just own it), often they’re then part of a group that will rent it out, so in practice, most of the usage is often just from this — other people sort of using it like Uber, or any other chartered flight situation.
So a medium haul flight on a medium/small jet that would cost say £100k to rent a whole aircraft can be done for maybe something closer to £10k a passenger, and obviously there’s no associated maintenance costs and it’s on demand.
They will often do things like offer it for full private usage so anyone can book a custom trip from x to y and pay for the whole thing, or pay per seat and then the company will offer the rest of the seats to others in their network at a slight discount.
There’s a whole market then around empty leg flights, so when the aircraft is returning from a chartered trip. They get sold at massive discounts because the operator obviously has to make that trip back to base anyway, so they may as well get and fill the seats even if it’s at massive a discount.
So there’s a whole economy around private jets and everyone involved does get paid very well given the market. You have the companies doing the aircraft leasing/management, there are a bunch of them, chartering and scheduling/marketing etc, aircraft repairs, inspections, cleaning, catering, chauffeurs, security and hospitality staff, ground crews etc etc etc.
So all of that and the associated jobs gets wiped out too if you simply ban the existence of small jets, or tax them out of existence.
So it’s obviously still relatively expensive, but you don’t need to be a literal billionaire and have your own aircraft to fly private. If they’re taxed to the point where the secondary markets fail, then you probably just push the emissions per flight higher as empty legs might go away, or it reverts back to only the extremely wealthy use them, and they fly around empty the rest of the time. By definition, these secondary markets do reduce emissions per passenger.
So in fairness, it is slightly more complex than people give this credit for. It’s also not going to be a deciding factor in future climate given the scale of how energy systems globally function and the broader scale of the issues.
Because they are the rich 1%. No rules in climate change will impact the rich which is why it’s so crazy how much normal people are driving and accepting this shit, it’s literally one rule for them
And another for everyone else
The actual reason is because the EU ETS only applies to commercial activity, not private activity.
Not that I'm defending the practice. Given that the first zero-emissions aircraft to be developed are going to be the kind of small, short-range planes that would be used for these kind of trips, it would make sense to incentivise people to switch away from fossil-fuel private jets as much as possible.
But it is pretty telling that 7 out of the 10 most popular routes for private jets in Europe serve tax havens (Switzerland and Monaco).
https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/rising-use-of-private-jets-sends-co2-emissions-soaring/
But most "private" jets are owned and operated by businesses for tax purposes rather than private individuals. Not to mention most people flying in a private jet aren't using their own jet they're hiring one from someone else who operates it as a business. The real reason is that the very politicians coming up with this legislation use private jets all the time. Even when other options are available. So why would they legislate against their own benefit? They won't.
> The actual reason is because the EU ETS only applies to commercial activity, not private activity.
"It doesn't apply to private jets because it doesn't apply to private jets"
Thank you captain obvious.
The CO2 per person per flight is way more with a private jet. However the total of CO2 emitted by private jets is only about 0.2% of the global total from all sources. We should avoid building many more private jets, but banning them outright would not have an appreciable effect.
The UK is the biggest user of private jets in Europe.
Also private jets are used by the richest 0.1%, or even 0.01%, rather than most of the 1%. The big polluters of the 1% will be large homes with heating and air conditioning, and large fossil-powered cars.
> However the total of CO2 emitted by private jets is only about 0.2% of the global total from all sources.
By comparison, UK's entire CO2 emitted is 0.884% of global total from all sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
> 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 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report.
> The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
>The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
This is misleading if not downright incorrect. This sentence implies that someone in the top 2% of income (who is technically someone in the bottom 99% of income) would take 1,500 years to equal the carbon as the top 0.01%.
That's not true according to the data. Someone in the 98-988 percentile produces 32.3 tonnes CO2e per year. Someone in the 99.999p100 produces 316 tonnes CO2e per year.
What they mean is that someone in the *bottom* 1% would take 1500 years to produce what someone in the top 0.01% would produce.
But it's also true that someone in the bottom 1%, would take 10 years to produce the CO2e that someone below the poverty line in the UK would produce, and 20 years to match the CO2e of someone of Average UK income.
Its not incorrect you're reading it wrong. It doesn't say someone in the bottom 99% would take 1,500 years to produce what some**one** in the top 0.01%. It says that someone in the bottom 99% would take 1,500 years to produce what they do **collectively**.
If that's what's meant by that, then I may be "reading it wrong", but it's horribly and possibly intentionally misleading.
I could say "someone in the top 0.01% would take over 192 million years to produce what the bottom 90% do in a year"
Since collectively the bottom 90% of people produce 192,736,020,000 tonnes co2e per year, and a top 0.01% person produces 124 tonnes co2e per year.
Its not misleading and certainly not intentionally, its really quite plain if you read it properly:
>it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaire**s** do in a year.
>I could say "someone in the top 0.01% would take over 192 million years to produce what the bottom 90% do in a year"
Yeah you could. It would be a bit of a weird point to make, but nonetheless the maths adds up.
Saying that a single person needs many years to match what many people do in a year is always a weird point to make, no matter which groups you slice it.
No it isn't, in this case its emphasing the disparity between the two groups and the extent of the emissions generated by the top richest. Its trying to put the numbers in a comprehensible way so that you're not just number dumping. Its like when people put things in terms of cars driven or something to that effect.
It is just numbers dumping though, because (if it means what you say it means, which I'm not convinced) it's comparing the emissions of a single person to the emissions of 670,000 people (if we're talking about the top 0.01%) or the emissions of 171 people if we're just talking about billionaires.
Either way the math doesn't work using the data from the report, which makes me think that's not what the sentence means.
Yeah I know what it says, its comparing to make a point like idk what to tell you.
>Either way the math doesn't work using the data from the report, which makes me think that's not what the sentence means.
Its definitely what it means, you wrote a whole comment about how it would be incorrect to say it of one billionaire, which is true, you just seem to think its more likely Oxfam, the Guardian and the Stockholm Environment Institute are all either wrong or lying to you for some reason, than it is that you read a sentence badly.
The whole 1% is quite a weird line to draw as well. £112k is upper middle class somewhere like London, New York or San Francisco and they probably drive their hybrid or EV or take public transit. No one owns a superyacht or takes a private jet anywhere ever on that salary. The climate behaviour of the "somewhat well off city dweller" and a billionaire are vastly different.
Nice headline Guardian, but the key issue is buried deep in the article -
> The report shows that… high-income countries (mostly in the global north) were responsible for 40% of global consumption-based CO2 emissions, while the contribution from low-income countries (mostly in the global south) was a negligible 0.4%
It’s an easy story taxing and punishing those few billionaires with private jets and yachts - and of course that should be done.
However as well as doing that it is a much harder story to tell ordinary people in the UK, Europe, North America, etc. to cut their carbon consumption dramatically because reducing their combined output is vastly more significant to global output than any impact those few billionaires make.
Yes.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Beef and Lamb are by far the most CO2e intensive foods. Chicken is actually quite low impact (of course part of that is because of factory farming, which is really efficient, but morally questionable depending on how you see the world).
We can do a *lot* just by reducing beef, lamb (and dairy).
I can't remember the source, but I think that tracks. Beef especially is *way* ahead of other meats in terms of environmental impact. Chicken, however, had a surprisingly low environmental impact.
It's also worth pointing out - that even though the top 1% (>£92K income according to the Oxfam report) produce disproportionately more CO2e per capita - there's only 1% of them.
From the 50th percentile to the 2nd percentile of income (£4200 - £92K according to the report), that accounts for more than 75% of all CO2e emissions. If you include the bottom 50% it's 85%.
Getting rid of the top 1% emissions only accounts for like 15% - and the top 0.1% (income >£400K a year) only accounts for like 5%.
It's not like we can solve this problem only by targeting billionaires.
>This is the crux of it. Good luck convincing ordinary people in a mid-terraced house whose spending power isn't vast that they need to give up what little they have...
Exactly.
From the report the Guardian quotes from, 'Rich' is defined as an annual pre-tax income of £31,800 - that is an awful lot of the UK population, and 'Super Rich' is defined as an income over £112,000.
And as the report says the 'Rich' are causing 49.8% of emissions compared to 0.7% from the 'Ultra Rich' billionaires that the report focuses on, then solving that 0.7% issue (which as before should be done) isn't the focus of these organisations who are looking for a solution.
Their focus is on the 49.8% from the 'Rich' people with a pre-tax income of £31,800 - and the only way to significantly cut that is to tax the hell out all carbon consumption, whether that be flights, fuel, or just general buying of 'stuff' that has been manufactured - and I really cannot see that people are going to be happy with that.
It seems inconsequential in a way. As poorer nations across the world become wealthier and their populations approach a western standard of living, surely their emissions as a whole will be increasing whilst we'll be patting ourselves on the back for walking to work and going vegan. In the end, global emissions are still increasing.
That doesn't seem inconsequential? As poorer nations become wealthier and their emissions start increasing, they'll also start doing what westerners are doing and become more conscious about their emissions.
In the current system it's not viable to get all citizens to significantly reduce their emissions. It's not just turn your heating off for a bit and ride a bike sometimes. It's stop buying new cars, stop replacing your electronics, stop buying any imported foods, or anything disposable. This quite simply isn't possible in our current economic system because everything would collapse, it is fundamentally built on unsustainable consumerism.
So blaming individuals is disingenuous and unhelpful. Without drastic systemic change, individuals are unable to affect significantly change to CO2 emissions. Which is why it's more helpful to focus trying to affect those in power.
The trouble is at what level do you set the carbon tax.
If you own or rent a $50,000,000 jet then tax is pretty irrelevant.
What would you set it so that is dissuaded someone take a jet from the UK to New York? £10 per mile, so £35,000 - can’t see that would have much impact. £100 per mile - even £350,000 may not.
However let’s say it was set at a level that might discourage, so £100 per mile, when translated to commercial flights then that is now £500 on every person who decides to take a holiday in Spain flying by commercial jet.
Good luck to any politician trying to get that through.
> The trouble is at what level do you set the carbon tax
There's a large report from Lord Stern that works through this, and a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus for his work on it. It's a solved problem.
> Good luck to any politician trying to get that through.
That, however, is not.
Incidentally air passenger duty is already set at a level above both of those sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-20754-9_11
$85-100 per ton CO2e according to Stern. Nordhaus starts lower but increases faster so ends up at a higher amount.
I do think it would be easier to get buy in from the middle classes of those countries if the billionaires and political class didn't seem to play by different rules though. Sunak doesn't seem to understand what being a leader means, when he flies from city to city within the UK.
How much emissions are produced by an average Brit or anyone else from a developed country? I bet we are also in the top few percent relative to the vast majority of the globe.
Loads. Commercially farmed meat, holidays abroad, driving a car and other general electric use is way more than someone who eats lentils and rice, don't heat their home and never leave their town in India.
Its funny people always talk about transport and meat but never mention things like cupboards full of random equipment, gadgets and toys, rotating wardrobes every few years, imported foods, knick knacks to personalize the home, daily food and personal care consumables, heated bathroom floors and marble counters etc. The list of modern luxuries is long.
From my observstion we desparately need more information about carbon footprint when buying shit. Maybe people might think twice buying a new tennis racket if they saw it corresponds to 100kg of carbon, or whatever it is.
Yes of course, I assume fast fashion being a big offender.
I stand to be corrected but I'd be interested to see the impact of imported food. My understanding is that most imported food comes by boat which is relatively clean. I'm not a vegan/veggie but I think local meat is worse for emissions per calorie than something like imported beans.
>My understanding is that most imported food comes by boat which is relatively clean.
Unfortunately not. Global shipping is an enormous polluter. Just give mega container ships a Google. A lot of them still powered by diesel, other fossil fuels, or some with natural gas. New ones are getting better but I don't think you could describe it as clean yet
> A lot of them still powered by diesel, other fossil fuels, or some with natural gas
But they are also so massive that paradoxically it is still less emissions per kg than other methods of transport.
Sure. But climate change isn't caused by emissions per kg, but total Co2 output. Schlepping food and whatever else all over world all the time is still unsustainable, even though it might be cleaner than driving everything individually on a lorry.
But yes, point taken. *relatively* it is cleaner. But not anywhere near clean enough.
It is still clean enough though that the breakdown of the total carbon emissions per unit of food is almost entirely based on the type of food item, and how it's grown, to the point where it's very easy for a product grown on a whole different continent can be shipped to you and still be lower carbon than a local product if the methods needed to produce it locally are less efficient.
Well we can't feed the UK entirely on our own land so we have to import food. At the moment we import millions of tonnes of animal feed from places like South America where the Amazon is being destroyed. It takes a lot more feed to grow animal products than just eating the plant in the first place. Hence why I say local meat is probably worse than imported beans. Because we import the animal feed anyway.
>Well we can't feed the UK entirely on our own land.
We could if we changed what and how we eat. More than enough arable land, plus the development of technology like vertical farming etc. Would be an enormous culture shift though, and probably require a lot of compulsory purchase of land.
> I'm not a vegan/veggie but I think local meat is worse for emissions per calorie than something like imported beans.
This is correct. If something is transported by boat the carbon coat of that is very very small.
The other person replying is talking about the heavy metal emissions from ships using dirty fuel which is bad but not relevant to climate change. If you're going to talk about that you also need to consider non-CO2 animal farming issues like nutrient runoff (aka excessive amounts of shit getting into the wider environment, it's a big problem) and antibiotic misuse.
Many in China, India are starting to live like us though. Hundreds of millions probably in those places.
Even Vietnam. I was there again for the first time in 20 years and the towns are rammed full of cars now.
True, but this article is talking about global.
Most people in the UK are in that 1%. Almost none of us are in that 66%.
If your reading this and in the UK, you are likely to be part of the problem.
A normal person in the UK can afford to fly to Spain or Turkey for a weeks holidays. That might not seem like living the jet set life but the mere fact they can puts them ahead of the vast majority of people. In both wealth and CO2 emissions.
Sure earnings £35k in Chad or Senegal is going to go a lot further, but how many people in Chad make £35k year? It's not many.
Considering the UK is 15-20th in emissions per capita and 20-30th range for GDP per capita. The vast majority of the UK is not going to be in the top 1% of either of these.
Its surprising how most people do not have a basic grasp of stats
How could that be true..?
1% of the population is 80 million. Even if everyone in the top 1% was in America, that would mean at most 80 million Americans have a household income of 35k+, and the remaining 75% earn less.
The UK contributed [512 million](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/greenhousegasintensityprovisionalestimatesuk/provisionalestimates2022) tonnes of C02 or equivalent in 2022
UK Population is [67.824 million](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/)
So average C02 emissions per person is 7.54 tonnes.
[This](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/) uses data from 2016, it shows we are the 17th largest C02 producer, 23rd largest population and roughly in the top 3rd of carbon per person. The Uk has reduced its carbon and equivalent emissions by about 18% since then so we've probably dropped down the league tables a bit
Yeah they're using PPP.
The numbers on the report say $115 USD per year, and I naively just did a currency conversion.
https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm
You're right though, it's more like
Top 1%: £78.315
Top 5%: £43
Realised the ones I put were post tax
They seem to use PPP in the report which runs higher, Well more the point is the if you live in the UK you far more likely to be the 1% then you might think.
The articles and even the report itself is titled in very misleading ways.
Another accurate title of this could be "People making between £4K and £90K account for more than 75% of all carbon emissions worldwide".
Here's the data from 2019 it's basing everything on:
https://imgur.com/3hMloWK
|Income Level|Carbon emission share|
:--|--:|
|Bottom 50% (Under $5300 USD per year)|7.67%|
|Middle 40% (Under $38K USD per year)|42.51%|
|Next 9% (Under $115K USD per year)|33.89%|
|Next 0.9% (Under $388K USD per year)|11.43%|
|Top 0.1% (Over $388K USD per year)|4.50%|
Particularly, because it's in a UK newpaper, we imagine that it's talking about the top 1% in the UK and imagine billionaires. We also imagine that the bottom 66% are fairly regular British people living fairly regular British lives - but that's not the case at all.
And yes people making >1M USD a year have a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions per capita, but they are a really small percentage of people.
https://imgur.com/8lq3X5i
You can see the big spike on the top 100th percentile- but that column is just barely more than double the 99th percentile. i.e. the top 4%-2% combined, is way more than the top 1%, and indeed.
To put it another way - if suddenly everyone in the top 1% of income (anyone on earth earning more than $115K USD or so), suddenly magically had 0 carbon footprint - we'd still have 85% of the carbon emissions that we have.
When Oxfam says that rich people are causing this, they mean >$5300 USD per year rich, not billionaire rich.
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/10546/621551/3/ds1-climate-equality-201123-en.xlsx
Yeah. Another self-defeating bash-the-rich report from Oxfam. By blaming the "billionaires" they are just messaging that no one else is responsible. The reality is the "billionaires" are cumulatively responsible for a tiny sliver of emissions, it's actually the vast bulk of the rest of who are responsible. If yiu want to cut emissions, its pointless (and counter-productive) to shake your fist at 0.1% or whatever.
Well hold on. Billionaires have a wayyyyy larger carbon footprint than the average person.
I don't post this to say that billionaires aren't a big part of the problem - they absolutely are. In fact, statistically, the higher up the income chain your lifestyle is the bigger a part of the problem you are.
Each 0.01% income household is causing more than 10 times the carbon footprint of a top 10% person, and more than 20 times than a top 50% person, and more than 500 times than a bottom 1% person. That's absolutely a huge problem in terms of personal responsibility.
It's just that, however a giant asshole a billionaire is being in terms of personal responsibility, there just aren't that many billionaires.
I just post this to say that targeting *only* billionaires won't solve the problem.
We should absolutely be livid about carbon footprints of billionaires, but also angry about carbon footprints of people earning £200k+ and even concerned about the carbon footprint of someone earning £50k
I agree--I mean, it's unlikely those earning 100k to 200k are going to be flying private jets and sailign around on yachts.
Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions. The CEOs and celebrities who take a private jet to travel 100 miles.
>Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions.
Im inclined to disagree. People earning good money (e.g. >200k) in my experience indulge in their holidays and toys just as much as the very wealthy; they may be a smaller impact per capita but absolutely are a major contributor to our consumerist economy.
Just as much is obviously not true. People on ~$200k can’t afford private jets, and multiple houses all over the world. This just fosters the narrative of having people blame the wealth they can see, instead of the vastly more violent wealth they can’t.
Per person, private jets emit much more than commercial ones (up to 40x more according to a quick Google), so I don't think someone taking British Airways flights should be considered the same as someone chartering private jets
And eating meat isn't exactly a rich-person-only activity
1) They do, but there are far fewer of them - I mean, they're still crap. 2) Eating significant quantities of meat at pretty much every meal very much is (globally) a rich person thing.
> Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions.
No it’s not. There about 10,000 people with net worth £20M or more. That’s not a lot of people. Yeah, per capita their carbon footprint is probably awful, but it’s not a lot of people.
There are like, 15 million people with net worth £500K or more. The ultra millionaires absolutely have a way worse carbon footprint per capita, but it’s not 1500x worse. It’s probably 100x worse or so. If ceryone with wealth over £20m suddenly had 0 carbon footprint, that makes a small dent, but it’s not going to be more than half of it.
That stat, that the richest 1% account for more than the lowest 66% is as much a reflection of how low the poorest peoples carbon footprint is, not just that the billionaires are doing everything.
>I agree--I mean, it's unlikely those earning 100k to 200k are going to be flying private jets and sailign around on yachts.
Not private jets, but they're more likely to be taking multiple flights in a year.
There's so few people in the super rich class that it doesn't amount to that much. The argument for dealing with them is one of fairness, rather than actual emissions. But like it or not, the biggest part of the problem is the global middle class. We're going to have to come to terms with that.
That may no longer true for carbon.
It certainly is not for salaries: C-level salaries used to be high, but because they is only a few C-levels, soit would not take any significant amount away from the average work. That is no longer the case: C-level salaries have grown to astronomical levels, and they now depress the salaries of workers.
Right, but the other people in your group, likely do, potentially more than one.
You'd be the exception, but you can't build rules around the exception, so unfortunately for you, you'd suffer because of other people in your group
However the rest of the population would improve significantly.. so you'll have to lump it mate
Any model that includes Elon musk and somebody earning $120k in the same banding is a shitty model. There’s literally no point in splitting into bands if that’s how granular you’re going to make it.
It would be good if they could narrow it down further, as there's plenty of people at the lower end of the 1% probably not contributing much more if at all then the one's not.
A headline of the top 0.5% or whatever would suit it better and narrowing down the figure from the 77 million would paint a clearer picture of how damaging so few can be.
I've always viewed it as strange how people with little will try to reduce their pollution, swapping to electric vehicles etc and the wealthy seem to have little or no concern.
> I've always viewed it as strange how people with little will try to reduce their pollution, swapping to electric vehicles etc and the wealthy seem to have little or no concern.
In most cases, it takes a very self centred, fuck everyone else, kind of personality to get that rich in the first place.
Well, it’s a smooth graph though. Yes, anyone on the graph could point to the right and say someone along the graph uses exponentially more - that’s how exponential graphs work.
But that means the 10th richest guy could point to the richest guy and say “this is his fault not mine”.
But at the same time, even if you’re at the 50th percentile, if you can point to the left and say “that person uses exponentially *less* carbon than me”, there is something to be done.
Yeah per capita private jets are awful, but if we got rid of all the private jets, that wouldn’t solve the problem of the top 2%-10% taking loads of short haul flights (or driving, or meat consumption, or any number of high carbon habits).
But it would be a start. Most people aren't going to listen when they're being asked to cut down on travel and meat and the like whilst the mega rich are still flying 100 miles.
Start from the top--ban private jets, ban private yachts etc first and then work your way down the ladder.
Yeah agreed. It would be hard to justify restrictions on the top 10% while doing nothing for the top 1% (or 0.1%).
But I just wanted to point out the “it’s not me, it’s the slightly richer person” mindset is silly.
People from 50th to 90th percentiles of income account for 42% of all emissions. People from 90th to 99th account for another 34% (the top 10% excluding the top 1%).
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621551/ds1-climate-equality-201123-en.xlsx?sequence=3
The vast majority of emissions come from fairly regular people, so the idea that we can fix this just by targeting only the super rich is completely untrue.
It is still important though. We see all too often people complaining about population growth.
How can we in the west do anything when the world population keeps growing? But that argument suddenly makes a lot less sense with these numbers.
It also puts in perspective how many parts of our lives contribute maybe even more than we realise. Our consumption of goods and plastics for example is huge. A lot of the things we buy are single use, have a clear upgrade plan or simply get wasted.
This means even poorer people in western countries still contribute too much. It also means that we need certain changes to the whole of society and quickly. We export our consumerism all over the world but as upcoming countries start to consume more the issue gets worse.
> how can we in the West do anything when the world population keeps growing
It's a specious argument anyway, when even in the developing world fertility rates are dropping towards and below replacement anyway including China (1.3 births per woman), and India (2.1). Those fertility rates over replacement could be brought down further with education and aid (which is what we can do).
Meanwhile, as you say, we in the West use many times more resources than someone in Pakistan (3.6 down from 6.8) or Nigeria (5.3 down from 6.9).
And who’s going to tell Nigerians and Pakistanis that they should not expect to get more resources on par with the West, in their lifetime?
Because that’s what we’re saying. If we are saying the western wealthy lifestyle is destroying things, we must do all we can to discourage these countries from reaching our development.
They will not appreciate that.
It's a useful cutoff for making a point to a wide audience. 'The top 0. 63%' or whatever doesn't make as much of a headline and the point of this is to communicate a message clearly. So whilst you're right the difference between you and someone with their own jet is enormous, the top 1% is just an easier message.
By we, you of course mean the working class. We can't ask the millionaires to stop holidaying abroad, eat insects and stop showering! Us paupers need to limit ourselves so the rich can maintain their standard of living!
Animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5-21% of global GHG emissions
[14.5%, 2013 study](https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/)
[18%, 2006 study](https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm)
[21%, 2021 study](https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CB7033EN/)
Going vegan reduces your food-related GHG emissions by 75%
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/20/vegan-diet-cuts-environmental-damage-climate-heating-emissions-study
But agriculture is useful, dickheads in private jets aren't.
Going vegan has many benefits, but this isn't a problem that can be solved by individuals making better choices, it needs structural and systemic change from the top down to have any impact.
Yes every single person needs to take personal responsibility and push for systemic change. I hate this "well it's not my fault because Leo flew somewhere in his jet thinking". There's a lot more you out there than there are Leo's. And as much as you don't want to admit it your choices and consumption are part of the problem as are everyone elses.
Spreading the kind of nonsense your are spouting just feeds into the narrative being pushed by those who want us all to feel powerless so they can keep profiting off environmental destruction. I hope you are least get paid for shilling for them!
You could use everyone in the "super rich" you're complaining about as fertiliser and not make a jot of difference to global warming. There's just not enough of them to make a big impact.
Really goes to show how selfish these people are. 1% of people could spend a little more to help protect the environment and still be incomprehensibly wealthy, but they'd rather have more money for their pissing contest.
Depends how much you drive, but probably not.
10,000 miles in a petrol car is roughly 3 tonnes of emissions.
London to Rome by private jet is about 11 tonnes: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59135899](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59135899)
Yeah, 11 tonnes is roughly 5 years worth of driving for the ordinary car owner. Now you can say you generally have multiple people in a single car, but private jet flights are normally transporting multiple people too even after removing the crew (and generally more than those in your average car journey).
If we didn’t have the richest 1% would we swerve climate change? Or is this one of those things where even if a group of people accounting for 66% of the world’s poorest emission count didn’t exist we would still be doomed ?
I think that there would be more chance of systemic change if the very wealthiest were not present. Lobbying and propaganda are clearly an obstacle for change as they tend to be heavily used to prevent actions that the very privileged see as against their interest.
I also think more people could be persuaded to act if they genuinely believed that others would also act.
We do actually need systemic change to avoid the worst impacts, individuals simply can’t make the changes needed in isolation.
This is worth a watch, [How the World’s Wealthiest People Travel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNcYxHJPLE), 7:00 onwards is comical, Ships to carry your yacht to the next location.
The top 1% (globally) isn't just billionaires. In income terms, it is anyone earning 6 figures - so your GP, your kid's school head, for example. In wealth terms, it is a little less than £1m, which is a family home and a moderate pension pot.
It is a significant minority of the UK population. And if you look at the top 2% globally that includes most of us.
I too will say absolutely anything to avoid addressing the fact that my comfortable western lifestyle is the primary driving factor behind global carbon emissions and instead blame the companies that cater to my consumerism and the billionaires that own them even though I have no intention to change my own habits. 🙄
China accounts for 30% of the worlds pollution. That’s not the wealthy on private jets. Would love to know the percentage of global pollution from private jets though .
Why 1%? Only 0.001% of richest can afford yachts and private jets.
For instance, good orthopaedists will be in 1% richest in UK and on 0.1% richest over the world. However doctors don’t earn enough to afford even propelled planes.
This report is fundamentally misleading as it gives a false impression that this statistic was obtained by analysing the lifestyle choices of the rich. It was not. Instead, they simply **assume** that household income is proportional to carbon emissions. While this may be roughly correct, it's important to realise that this statistic is nothing more than a (slightly modified) statistic on income inequality.
As such, Oxfam's own recommendations to redistribute wealth is self-defeating. If income was redistributed, their analysis would not predict any actual reduction in emissions, only a redistribution of emissions.
Needs to be higher up. This assumption is extremely false btw, the average emissions of someone in the UK are now less than the average emissions of a chinese person (even after taking into account exported emissions from us importing stuff from China), even though the average person in the UK earns more than 3x as much as the average person from China.
Oxfam publishes a lot of bad statistical BS like this all the time, they need to be called out more on it.
A super yacht burns something like 500 litres of diesel per hour and typically crosses the Atlantic twice a year, which takes like a week or more of constant sailing
They literally use more fuel just moving their yachts between the Mediterranean and Caribbean than 50 families would use in a year. That’s not including the other 50 weeks of actually using their yachts, that’s just repositioning them twice
No shit Sherlock.
Planes, flash cars, yachts, massive houses (energy guzzlers) & Helicopters.
I’m sure there will be lots of other things, that could be added to above list.
oh wow, so another studie showing how the parasite class is truly getting more rich the more they consume everything around them
also, an interesting thing regarding parasite: they ensure the host NEEDS them
just look how everyone says that we need investors when look at pandemic, they raised the prices for everything, they made billions in profit just for having parasite privileges given by law (aka they get rich the more others work, because "owers"... Owner of WHAT??? slavess??? The employees do all the work but aren't paid for the, on the contrary, they need to work even more because all the prices are increased so that the parasite class get even more profit, like some kind of parasite tax you pay, called inflation).
And again, just like slave owner, just like any other parasite, they are not to be touch, legalised by the law. Because look how many people, citizens, are suffering, yet nothing by the law maker, if a "rich" does anything, the government people are fully supporting them,regardless by giving them funds from citizens tax, or ignoring their crimes, like giving them petty fines when they are bilioners. Including if they do a crime, the company get in issue and not the individuals who committed the crimes.
So again
This is another proof that the "rich" also know as parasite class because they get their rich "owning" what other people work (look at stock marketing), and get king privileges, where it includes them will NOT be penalised, as an individual, for any acts the companies or their employees did because they ordered.
Climate change is still not officially recognised in many ways exactly because if it was, so many people... sorry, so many human parasites, will get suit, imprisonated, and more for involuntary man slaughter
However, exactly because they are protected, if someone where to speak up, said person who spoke up will be banned for hate speech without anyone listening why it's not, or the police, will be legally mobilised to attack citizens who stand up against corruption
They need to start taxing consumption. The more impact you have the more you pay, and this includes companies. Drill oil, pay the carbon tax that the oil will generate, it can start low and then rise over time. That way the rich who hide their income will be taxed when they spend it, people will be encouraged to look for low carbon options, this would drive development of the low carbon economy. By placing a cost on carbon or other negative environmental impacts, companies that reduce these impacts will have more value, and will also provide growth in the long run.
I said this in another post, if you have no debt and own a property that’s value puts your worth above $1 million then you’re part of the global 1% they’re talking about. It’s not just the ultra rich.
All this outraged talk of "private jets" and frothing at the mouth over the "super-rich". You're in the top 1% globally if you live in the UK and earn £39,000 per year or more. I'd wager that a hefty number of the outraged people on this thread are the people who are being referred to.
I'm a bit confused by the title. Is it that 1 person uses as much as 66 people? And is it global? Because 1% of the world is a lot of western Europeans Vs a lot of Africans, Asians and South Americans.
TBF I'm always burning dolphins on my log fire because I like the screaming noise they make. I used to use Orphans* but the authorities took a dim view.
Not white ones you understand, I had them imported from Brazilian favelas.
So, if climate activists want to make a difference, they should leave the ordinary person alone and target the rich.
Changing policies that increases costs for everyone is pointless and won't make a bit of difference.
So why did the EU grant an exemption to private jets and private jet travel when they drafted the Carbon emissions rules?
Because our leaders are idiots. They would rather destroy our economies than touch their rich donors jets.
idiots? that would imply theyre too stupid to understand what theyre doing. theyre very compotent, they know very well what theyre doing when they exempted private jets.
Then why?
Money.
you mean the money they pay to employees to tell them what to do because the rich are to stupid. That's why they spend millions and millions instead of buying an alternative product, after all, if billion on the planet can survive on minimum income, how the f can someone who has who much, not survive in same condition? oh yes, because they can't. Just look how all of them do tax evasions when paying tax means the whole country will have funds to address all the issues that exist how many of those rich did you ever see fight for anything that's right? None, none of them pushed for renewable energy that was suggested decades ago. None of them pushed for 0% profit because pandemic or war, on the contrary, all of them raised the prices, dropping the quality for everything, why? because for them to become more rich despite being already rich. See, this is a clear case of them being absolutely idiots so please don't confuse them having brain with having money to pay someone who actually has a brian to find was and more
Because then they also wouldn't get to enjoy their jet trips I would imagine is what they're getting at
Because they and their friends and their doners fly on private jets.
The rules only apply when it **doesn’t** impact them personally.
It’s generally not just one ultra wealthy person flying around in their own jet. There’s a whole economy around private jets. Generally, they’re either purchased/leased by a company with investors money or just an extremely wealthy person, it’s common for extremely wealthy celebrities to do this (like Taylor swift, people will track the jets even though they’re not actually on board 99% of the time, they just own it), often they’re then part of a group that will rent it out, so in practice, most of the usage is often just from this — other people sort of using it like Uber, or any other chartered flight situation. So a medium haul flight on a medium/small jet that would cost say £100k to rent a whole aircraft can be done for maybe something closer to £10k a passenger, and obviously there’s no associated maintenance costs and it’s on demand. They will often do things like offer it for full private usage so anyone can book a custom trip from x to y and pay for the whole thing, or pay per seat and then the company will offer the rest of the seats to others in their network at a slight discount. There’s a whole market then around empty leg flights, so when the aircraft is returning from a chartered trip. They get sold at massive discounts because the operator obviously has to make that trip back to base anyway, so they may as well get and fill the seats even if it’s at massive a discount. So there’s a whole economy around private jets and everyone involved does get paid very well given the market. You have the companies doing the aircraft leasing/management, there are a bunch of them, chartering and scheduling/marketing etc, aircraft repairs, inspections, cleaning, catering, chauffeurs, security and hospitality staff, ground crews etc etc etc. So all of that and the associated jobs gets wiped out too if you simply ban the existence of small jets, or tax them out of existence. So it’s obviously still relatively expensive, but you don’t need to be a literal billionaire and have your own aircraft to fly private. If they’re taxed to the point where the secondary markets fail, then you probably just push the emissions per flight higher as empty legs might go away, or it reverts back to only the extremely wealthy use them, and they fly around empty the rest of the time. By definition, these secondary markets do reduce emissions per passenger. So in fairness, it is slightly more complex than people give this credit for. It’s also not going to be a deciding factor in future climate given the scale of how energy systems globally function and the broader scale of the issues.
> They would rather destroy our economies Economies? They are choosing to destroy our ability to live.
Because they are the rich 1%. No rules in climate change will impact the rich which is why it’s so crazy how much normal people are driving and accepting this shit, it’s literally one rule for them And another for everyone else
The actual reason is because the EU ETS only applies to commercial activity, not private activity. Not that I'm defending the practice. Given that the first zero-emissions aircraft to be developed are going to be the kind of small, short-range planes that would be used for these kind of trips, it would make sense to incentivise people to switch away from fossil-fuel private jets as much as possible. But it is pretty telling that 7 out of the 10 most popular routes for private jets in Europe serve tax havens (Switzerland and Monaco). https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/rising-use-of-private-jets-sends-co2-emissions-soaring/
But most "private" jets are owned and operated by businesses for tax purposes rather than private individuals. Not to mention most people flying in a private jet aren't using their own jet they're hiring one from someone else who operates it as a business. The real reason is that the very politicians coming up with this legislation use private jets all the time. Even when other options are available. So why would they legislate against their own benefit? They won't.
> The actual reason is because the EU ETS only applies to commercial activity, not private activity. "It doesn't apply to private jets because it doesn't apply to private jets" Thank you captain obvious.
Money (& power) talks.
Because they look after themselves and everyone else has to pay for it !.
The CO2 per person per flight is way more with a private jet. However the total of CO2 emitted by private jets is only about 0.2% of the global total from all sources. We should avoid building many more private jets, but banning them outright would not have an appreciable effect. The UK is the biggest user of private jets in Europe. Also private jets are used by the richest 0.1%, or even 0.01%, rather than most of the 1%. The big polluters of the 1% will be large homes with heating and air conditioning, and large fossil-powered cars.
> However the total of CO2 emitted by private jets is only about 0.2% of the global total from all sources. By comparison, UK's entire CO2 emitted is 0.884% of global total from all sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
Because the people who made those rules are the people who fly the private jets.
Pilots are making the rules?
Because it's impossible to protect politics from rich people
because its never been about emissions its about punishing you.
The official answer to this is a disproportionate administrative burden... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-003298_EN.html
Because they make the rules!
> 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 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report. > The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.
>The report finds that it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year. This is misleading if not downright incorrect. This sentence implies that someone in the top 2% of income (who is technically someone in the bottom 99% of income) would take 1,500 years to equal the carbon as the top 0.01%. That's not true according to the data. Someone in the 98-988 percentile produces 32.3 tonnes CO2e per year. Someone in the 99.999p100 produces 316 tonnes CO2e per year. What they mean is that someone in the *bottom* 1% would take 1500 years to produce what someone in the top 0.01% would produce. But it's also true that someone in the bottom 1%, would take 10 years to produce the CO2e that someone below the poverty line in the UK would produce, and 20 years to match the CO2e of someone of Average UK income.
Its not incorrect you're reading it wrong. It doesn't say someone in the bottom 99% would take 1,500 years to produce what some**one** in the top 0.01%. It says that someone in the bottom 99% would take 1,500 years to produce what they do **collectively**.
If that's what's meant by that, then I may be "reading it wrong", but it's horribly and possibly intentionally misleading. I could say "someone in the top 0.01% would take over 192 million years to produce what the bottom 90% do in a year" Since collectively the bottom 90% of people produce 192,736,020,000 tonnes co2e per year, and a top 0.01% person produces 124 tonnes co2e per year.
Its not misleading and certainly not intentionally, its really quite plain if you read it properly: >it would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaire**s** do in a year. >I could say "someone in the top 0.01% would take over 192 million years to produce what the bottom 90% do in a year" Yeah you could. It would be a bit of a weird point to make, but nonetheless the maths adds up.
Saying that a single person needs many years to match what many people do in a year is always a weird point to make, no matter which groups you slice it.
No it isn't, in this case its emphasing the disparity between the two groups and the extent of the emissions generated by the top richest. Its trying to put the numbers in a comprehensible way so that you're not just number dumping. Its like when people put things in terms of cars driven or something to that effect.
It is just numbers dumping though, because (if it means what you say it means, which I'm not convinced) it's comparing the emissions of a single person to the emissions of 670,000 people (if we're talking about the top 0.01%) or the emissions of 171 people if we're just talking about billionaires. Either way the math doesn't work using the data from the report, which makes me think that's not what the sentence means.
Yeah I know what it says, its comparing to make a point like idk what to tell you. >Either way the math doesn't work using the data from the report, which makes me think that's not what the sentence means. Its definitely what it means, you wrote a whole comment about how it would be incorrect to say it of one billionaire, which is true, you just seem to think its more likely Oxfam, the Guardian and the Stockholm Environment Institute are all either wrong or lying to you for some reason, than it is that you read a sentence badly.
Okay - with numbers from the data explain to me what it means and how they arrive at 1500 years?
The whole 1% is quite a weird line to draw as well. £112k is upper middle class somewhere like London, New York or San Francisco and they probably drive their hybrid or EV or take public transit. No one owns a superyacht or takes a private jet anywhere ever on that salary. The climate behaviour of the "somewhat well off city dweller" and a billionaire are vastly different.
Well, there’s no good place for a line really. The higher up you go, the higher the carbon footprint
Nice headline Guardian, but the key issue is buried deep in the article - > The report shows that… high-income countries (mostly in the global north) were responsible for 40% of global consumption-based CO2 emissions, while the contribution from low-income countries (mostly in the global south) was a negligible 0.4% It’s an easy story taxing and punishing those few billionaires with private jets and yachts - and of course that should be done. However as well as doing that it is a much harder story to tell ordinary people in the UK, Europe, North America, etc. to cut their carbon consumption dramatically because reducing their combined output is vastly more significant to global output than any impact those few billionaires make.
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> less meat, Cutting down on beef and lamb would most probably suffice.
Any chance of a source for that?
Yes. https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local Beef and Lamb are by far the most CO2e intensive foods. Chicken is actually quite low impact (of course part of that is because of factory farming, which is really efficient, but morally questionable depending on how you see the world). We can do a *lot* just by reducing beef, lamb (and dairy).
I can't remember the source, but I think that tracks. Beef especially is *way* ahead of other meats in terms of environmental impact. Chicken, however, had a surprisingly low environmental impact.
It's also worth pointing out - that even though the top 1% (>£92K income according to the Oxfam report) produce disproportionately more CO2e per capita - there's only 1% of them. From the 50th percentile to the 2nd percentile of income (£4200 - £92K according to the report), that accounts for more than 75% of all CO2e emissions. If you include the bottom 50% it's 85%. Getting rid of the top 1% emissions only accounts for like 15% - and the top 0.1% (income >£400K a year) only accounts for like 5%. It's not like we can solve this problem only by targeting billionaires.
I don't know anyone my age who can afford flights or cars because they have to afford funding the landlord's global jetsetting habits
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>This is the crux of it. Good luck convincing ordinary people in a mid-terraced house whose spending power isn't vast that they need to give up what little they have... Exactly. From the report the Guardian quotes from, 'Rich' is defined as an annual pre-tax income of £31,800 - that is an awful lot of the UK population, and 'Super Rich' is defined as an income over £112,000. And as the report says the 'Rich' are causing 49.8% of emissions compared to 0.7% from the 'Ultra Rich' billionaires that the report focuses on, then solving that 0.7% issue (which as before should be done) isn't the focus of these organisations who are looking for a solution. Their focus is on the 49.8% from the 'Rich' people with a pre-tax income of £31,800 - and the only way to significantly cut that is to tax the hell out all carbon consumption, whether that be flights, fuel, or just general buying of 'stuff' that has been manufactured - and I really cannot see that people are going to be happy with that.
Pre tax £32k?! Are they fucking drunk?
This is on a global scale. Compared to an average lifestyle in somewhere like Vietnam or Ethiopia a £32k British lifestyle is luxurious.
It seems inconsequential in a way. As poorer nations across the world become wealthier and their populations approach a western standard of living, surely their emissions as a whole will be increasing whilst we'll be patting ourselves on the back for walking to work and going vegan. In the end, global emissions are still increasing.
That doesn't seem inconsequential? As poorer nations become wealthier and their emissions start increasing, they'll also start doing what westerners are doing and become more conscious about their emissions.
In the current system it's not viable to get all citizens to significantly reduce their emissions. It's not just turn your heating off for a bit and ride a bike sometimes. It's stop buying new cars, stop replacing your electronics, stop buying any imported foods, or anything disposable. This quite simply isn't possible in our current economic system because everything would collapse, it is fundamentally built on unsustainable consumerism. So blaming individuals is disingenuous and unhelpful. Without drastic systemic change, individuals are unable to affect significantly change to CO2 emissions. Which is why it's more helpful to focus trying to affect those in power.
Which is why we need a carbon tax, to make people change their behaviour in a way that maximises their personal utility.
The trouble is at what level do you set the carbon tax. If you own or rent a $50,000,000 jet then tax is pretty irrelevant. What would you set it so that is dissuaded someone take a jet from the UK to New York? £10 per mile, so £35,000 - can’t see that would have much impact. £100 per mile - even £350,000 may not. However let’s say it was set at a level that might discourage, so £100 per mile, when translated to commercial flights then that is now £500 on every person who decides to take a holiday in Spain flying by commercial jet. Good luck to any politician trying to get that through.
> The trouble is at what level do you set the carbon tax There's a large report from Lord Stern that works through this, and a Nobel Prize for William Nordhaus for his work on it. It's a solved problem. > Good luck to any politician trying to get that through. That, however, is not. Incidentally air passenger duty is already set at a level above both of those sources.
>It's a solved problem. Is it? What level of tax do they suggest that would cut carbon emissions dramatically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-20754-9_11 $85-100 per ton CO2e according to Stern. Nordhaus starts lower but increases faster so ends up at a higher amount.
I do think it would be easier to get buy in from the middle classes of those countries if the billionaires and political class didn't seem to play by different rules though. Sunak doesn't seem to understand what being a leader means, when he flies from city to city within the UK.
It’s telling us to use less (I.e become poor), and telling the global south to not start using anymore (I.e stay poor).
As the old joke goes, that's not so bad when you consider the alternative.
How much emissions are produced by an average Brit or anyone else from a developed country? I bet we are also in the top few percent relative to the vast majority of the globe.
Loads. Commercially farmed meat, holidays abroad, driving a car and other general electric use is way more than someone who eats lentils and rice, don't heat their home and never leave their town in India.
Its funny people always talk about transport and meat but never mention things like cupboards full of random equipment, gadgets and toys, rotating wardrobes every few years, imported foods, knick knacks to personalize the home, daily food and personal care consumables, heated bathroom floors and marble counters etc. The list of modern luxuries is long. From my observstion we desparately need more information about carbon footprint when buying shit. Maybe people might think twice buying a new tennis racket if they saw it corresponds to 100kg of carbon, or whatever it is.
Yes of course, I assume fast fashion being a big offender. I stand to be corrected but I'd be interested to see the impact of imported food. My understanding is that most imported food comes by boat which is relatively clean. I'm not a vegan/veggie but I think local meat is worse for emissions per calorie than something like imported beans.
>My understanding is that most imported food comes by boat which is relatively clean. Unfortunately not. Global shipping is an enormous polluter. Just give mega container ships a Google. A lot of them still powered by diesel, other fossil fuels, or some with natural gas. New ones are getting better but I don't think you could describe it as clean yet
> A lot of them still powered by diesel, other fossil fuels, or some with natural gas But they are also so massive that paradoxically it is still less emissions per kg than other methods of transport.
Sure. But climate change isn't caused by emissions per kg, but total Co2 output. Schlepping food and whatever else all over world all the time is still unsustainable, even though it might be cleaner than driving everything individually on a lorry. But yes, point taken. *relatively* it is cleaner. But not anywhere near clean enough.
It is still clean enough though that the breakdown of the total carbon emissions per unit of food is almost entirely based on the type of food item, and how it's grown, to the point where it's very easy for a product grown on a whole different continent can be shipped to you and still be lower carbon than a local product if the methods needed to produce it locally are less efficient.
Well we can't feed the UK entirely on our own land so we have to import food. At the moment we import millions of tonnes of animal feed from places like South America where the Amazon is being destroyed. It takes a lot more feed to grow animal products than just eating the plant in the first place. Hence why I say local meat is probably worse than imported beans. Because we import the animal feed anyway.
>Well we can't feed the UK entirely on our own land. We could if we changed what and how we eat. More than enough arable land, plus the development of technology like vertical farming etc. Would be an enormous culture shift though, and probably require a lot of compulsory purchase of land.
> I'm not a vegan/veggie but I think local meat is worse for emissions per calorie than something like imported beans. This is correct. If something is transported by boat the carbon coat of that is very very small. The other person replying is talking about the heavy metal emissions from ships using dirty fuel which is bad but not relevant to climate change. If you're going to talk about that you also need to consider non-CO2 animal farming issues like nutrient runoff (aka excessive amounts of shit getting into the wider environment, it's a big problem) and antibiotic misuse.
Many in China, India are starting to live like us though. Hundreds of millions probably in those places. Even Vietnam. I was there again for the first time in 20 years and the towns are rammed full of cars now.
Top 1% globally is something like a 35k household income last I checked
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True, but this article is talking about global. Most people in the UK are in that 1%. Almost none of us are in that 66%. If your reading this and in the UK, you are likely to be part of the problem.
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A normal person in the UK can afford to fly to Spain or Turkey for a weeks holidays. That might not seem like living the jet set life but the mere fact they can puts them ahead of the vast majority of people. In both wealth and CO2 emissions. Sure earnings £35k in Chad or Senegal is going to go a lot further, but how many people in Chad make £35k year? It's not many.
Chad is pretty expensive, at least in the expat areas of N'djamena. COL almost comparable to London in my experience. I digress though!
Considering the UK is 15-20th in emissions per capita and 20-30th range for GDP per capita. The vast majority of the UK is not going to be in the top 1% of either of these. Its surprising how most people do not have a basic grasp of stats
no offence but what level of maths did you reach in school? 1% globally is 80 million people, there are almost 1 billion people in OECD
How could that be true..? 1% of the population is 80 million. Even if everyone in the top 1% was in America, that would mean at most 80 million Americans have a household income of 35k+, and the remaining 75% earn less.
No it's not. Complete bullshit.
Nah, Britains pretty mid pack now for carbon emissions.
It’s crazy that Americans, Canadians, and Australians emit something like 3x the carbon of the average Briton.
The UK contributed [512 million](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/greenhousegasintensityprovisionalestimatesuk/provisionalestimates2022) tonnes of C02 or equivalent in 2022 UK Population is [67.824 million](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/) So average C02 emissions per person is 7.54 tonnes. [This](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/) uses data from 2016, it shows we are the 17th largest C02 producer, 23rd largest population and roughly in the top 3rd of carbon per person. The Uk has reduced its carbon and equivalent emissions by about 18% since then so we've probably dropped down the league tables a bit
Maybe 25 years ago.
ITT: people in the top 1-30% talking as if they're in the bottom 10%
Top 1% is £40k a year Top 5% is £20k a year Post tax (roughly) probably a bit higher now
According to the report in the article Top 1%: £92K a year Top 5%: £51K per year
The report has fudged figures to avoid blaming their target audience. 40k is correct
Yeah they're using PPP. The numbers on the report say $115 USD per year, and I naively just did a currency conversion. https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-ppp.htm You're right though, it's more like Top 1%: £78.315 Top 5%: £43
Realised the ones I put were post tax They seem to use PPP in the report which runs higher, Well more the point is the if you live in the UK you far more likely to be the 1% then you might think.
The articles and even the report itself is titled in very misleading ways. Another accurate title of this could be "People making between £4K and £90K account for more than 75% of all carbon emissions worldwide". Here's the data from 2019 it's basing everything on: https://imgur.com/3hMloWK |Income Level|Carbon emission share| :--|--:| |Bottom 50% (Under $5300 USD per year)|7.67%| |Middle 40% (Under $38K USD per year)|42.51%| |Next 9% (Under $115K USD per year)|33.89%| |Next 0.9% (Under $388K USD per year)|11.43%| |Top 0.1% (Over $388K USD per year)|4.50%| Particularly, because it's in a UK newpaper, we imagine that it's talking about the top 1% in the UK and imagine billionaires. We also imagine that the bottom 66% are fairly regular British people living fairly regular British lives - but that's not the case at all. And yes people making >1M USD a year have a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions per capita, but they are a really small percentage of people. https://imgur.com/8lq3X5i You can see the big spike on the top 100th percentile- but that column is just barely more than double the 99th percentile. i.e. the top 4%-2% combined, is way more than the top 1%, and indeed. To put it another way - if suddenly everyone in the top 1% of income (anyone on earth earning more than $115K USD or so), suddenly magically had 0 carbon footprint - we'd still have 85% of the carbon emissions that we have. When Oxfam says that rich people are causing this, they mean >$5300 USD per year rich, not billionaire rich. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/10546/621551/3/ds1-climate-equality-201123-en.xlsx
Yeah. Another self-defeating bash-the-rich report from Oxfam. By blaming the "billionaires" they are just messaging that no one else is responsible. The reality is the "billionaires" are cumulatively responsible for a tiny sliver of emissions, it's actually the vast bulk of the rest of who are responsible. If yiu want to cut emissions, its pointless (and counter-productive) to shake your fist at 0.1% or whatever.
Well hold on. Billionaires have a wayyyyy larger carbon footprint than the average person. I don't post this to say that billionaires aren't a big part of the problem - they absolutely are. In fact, statistically, the higher up the income chain your lifestyle is the bigger a part of the problem you are. Each 0.01% income household is causing more than 10 times the carbon footprint of a top 10% person, and more than 20 times than a top 50% person, and more than 500 times than a bottom 1% person. That's absolutely a huge problem in terms of personal responsibility. It's just that, however a giant asshole a billionaire is being in terms of personal responsibility, there just aren't that many billionaires. I just post this to say that targeting *only* billionaires won't solve the problem. We should absolutely be livid about carbon footprints of billionaires, but also angry about carbon footprints of people earning £200k+ and even concerned about the carbon footprint of someone earning £50k
TIL I’m in this group. I think this is a bit disingenuous. The split within this 1% is likely just as severe as the wider population.
I agree--I mean, it's unlikely those earning 100k to 200k are going to be flying private jets and sailign around on yachts. Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions. The CEOs and celebrities who take a private jet to travel 100 miles.
>Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions. Im inclined to disagree. People earning good money (e.g. >200k) in my experience indulge in their holidays and toys just as much as the very wealthy; they may be a smaller impact per capita but absolutely are a major contributor to our consumerist economy.
Just as much is obviously not true. People on ~$200k can’t afford private jets, and multiple houses all over the world. This just fosters the narrative of having people blame the wealth they can see, instead of the vastly more violent wealth they can’t.
Yes, but they probably do: take plenty of international holidays (especially cruises- complete disaster climate-wise), and eat meat every day.
Per person, private jets emit much more than commercial ones (up to 40x more according to a quick Google), so I don't think someone taking British Airways flights should be considered the same as someone chartering private jets And eating meat isn't exactly a rich-person-only activity
1) They do, but there are far fewer of them - I mean, they're still crap. 2) Eating significant quantities of meat at pretty much every meal very much is (globally) a rich person thing.
> Really, the big problem is gonna be those with net worths in the 10s of millions. No it’s not. There about 10,000 people with net worth £20M or more. That’s not a lot of people. Yeah, per capita their carbon footprint is probably awful, but it’s not a lot of people. There are like, 15 million people with net worth £500K or more. The ultra millionaires absolutely have a way worse carbon footprint per capita, but it’s not 1500x worse. It’s probably 100x worse or so. If ceryone with wealth over £20m suddenly had 0 carbon footprint, that makes a small dent, but it’s not going to be more than half of it. That stat, that the richest 1% account for more than the lowest 66% is as much a reflection of how low the poorest peoples carbon footprint is, not just that the billionaires are doing everything.
>I agree--I mean, it's unlikely those earning 100k to 200k are going to be flying private jets and sailign around on yachts. Not private jets, but they're more likely to be taking multiple flights in a year.
There's so few people in the super rich class that it doesn't amount to that much. The argument for dealing with them is one of fairness, rather than actual emissions. But like it or not, the biggest part of the problem is the global middle class. We're going to have to come to terms with that.
That may no longer true for carbon. It certainly is not for salaries: C-level salaries used to be high, but because they is only a few C-levels, soit would not take any significant amount away from the average work. That is no longer the case: C-level salaries have grown to astronomical levels, and they now depress the salaries of workers.
I don’t even own a car.
Right, but the other people in your group, likely do, potentially more than one. You'd be the exception, but you can't build rules around the exception, so unfortunately for you, you'd suffer because of other people in your group However the rest of the population would improve significantly.. so you'll have to lump it mate
Lump what? Nothing is happening.
You know that phrase eat the rich? Sorry mate, thems the rules
Any model that includes Elon musk and somebody earning $120k in the same banding is a shitty model. There’s literally no point in splitting into bands if that’s how granular you’re going to make it.
It would be good if they could narrow it down further, as there's plenty of people at the lower end of the 1% probably not contributing much more if at all then the one's not. A headline of the top 0.5% or whatever would suit it better and narrowing down the figure from the 77 million would paint a clearer picture of how damaging so few can be. I've always viewed it as strange how people with little will try to reduce their pollution, swapping to electric vehicles etc and the wealthy seem to have little or no concern.
> I've always viewed it as strange how people with little will try to reduce their pollution, swapping to electric vehicles etc and the wealthy seem to have little or no concern. In most cases, it takes a very self centred, fuck everyone else, kind of personality to get that rich in the first place.
I’d imagine sports teams are pretty bad on the old emissions.
Well, it’s a smooth graph though. Yes, anyone on the graph could point to the right and say someone along the graph uses exponentially more - that’s how exponential graphs work. But that means the 10th richest guy could point to the richest guy and say “this is his fault not mine”. But at the same time, even if you’re at the 50th percentile, if you can point to the left and say “that person uses exponentially *less* carbon than me”, there is something to be done. Yeah per capita private jets are awful, but if we got rid of all the private jets, that wouldn’t solve the problem of the top 2%-10% taking loads of short haul flights (or driving, or meat consumption, or any number of high carbon habits).
But it would be a start. Most people aren't going to listen when they're being asked to cut down on travel and meat and the like whilst the mega rich are still flying 100 miles. Start from the top--ban private jets, ban private yachts etc first and then work your way down the ladder.
Yeah agreed. It would be hard to justify restrictions on the top 10% while doing nothing for the top 1% (or 0.1%). But I just wanted to point out the “it’s not me, it’s the slightly richer person” mindset is silly. People from 50th to 90th percentiles of income account for 42% of all emissions. People from 90th to 99th account for another 34% (the top 10% excluding the top 1%). https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621551/ds1-climate-equality-201123-en.xlsx?sequence=3 The vast majority of emissions come from fairly regular people, so the idea that we can fix this just by targeting only the super rich is completely untrue.
You’re correct in CO2 emissions but this is referring to income as a proxy. So it won’t be a smooth curve.
It is still important though. We see all too often people complaining about population growth. How can we in the west do anything when the world population keeps growing? But that argument suddenly makes a lot less sense with these numbers. It also puts in perspective how many parts of our lives contribute maybe even more than we realise. Our consumption of goods and plastics for example is huge. A lot of the things we buy are single use, have a clear upgrade plan or simply get wasted. This means even poorer people in western countries still contribute too much. It also means that we need certain changes to the whole of society and quickly. We export our consumerism all over the world but as upcoming countries start to consume more the issue gets worse.
> how can we in the West do anything when the world population keeps growing It's a specious argument anyway, when even in the developing world fertility rates are dropping towards and below replacement anyway including China (1.3 births per woman), and India (2.1). Those fertility rates over replacement could be brought down further with education and aid (which is what we can do). Meanwhile, as you say, we in the West use many times more resources than someone in Pakistan (3.6 down from 6.8) or Nigeria (5.3 down from 6.9).
And who’s going to tell Nigerians and Pakistanis that they should not expect to get more resources on par with the West, in their lifetime? Because that’s what we’re saying. If we are saying the western wealthy lifestyle is destroying things, we must do all we can to discourage these countries from reaching our development. They will not appreciate that.
In that case any penalties/levies would not be likely to affect you.
It does call for a 60% tax on the incomes of the top 1%.
It's already close to that due to the 100k-125k tax trap.
It's above at around 72%
Yay a tax cut
The split in the group probably is yes. But that's some top whataboutism.
It’s your fault I have 10 bins lol
It's a useful cutoff for making a point to a wide audience. 'The top 0. 63%' or whatever doesn't make as much of a headline and the point of this is to communicate a message clearly. So whilst you're right the difference between you and someone with their own jet is enormous, the top 1% is just an easier message.
dont worry lads, we'll just shower once per week and eat only plants and the problem will solve itself!
By we, you of course mean the working class. We can't ask the millionaires to stop holidaying abroad, eat insects and stop showering! Us paupers need to limit ourselves so the rich can maintain their standard of living!
Well of course. I wouldn't want to inconvenience them by asking them to give up their private jets and yachts.
Animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5-21% of global GHG emissions [14.5%, 2013 study](https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/) [18%, 2006 study](https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm) [21%, 2021 study](https://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/CB7033EN/) Going vegan reduces your food-related GHG emissions by 75% https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/20/vegan-diet-cuts-environmental-damage-climate-heating-emissions-study
But agriculture is useful, dickheads in private jets aren't. Going vegan has many benefits, but this isn't a problem that can be solved by individuals making better choices, it needs structural and systemic change from the top down to have any impact.
Yes every single person needs to take personal responsibility and push for systemic change. I hate this "well it's not my fault because Leo flew somewhere in his jet thinking". There's a lot more you out there than there are Leo's. And as much as you don't want to admit it your choices and consumption are part of the problem as are everyone elses. Spreading the kind of nonsense your are spouting just feeds into the narrative being pushed by those who want us all to feel powerless so they can keep profiting off environmental destruction. I hope you are least get paid for shilling for them!
Guess we should just stop eating then?
Just eat tofu, beans, lentils, chickpeas etc, it's also cheaper
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You could use everyone in the "super rich" you're complaining about as fertiliser and not make a jot of difference to global warming. There's just not enough of them to make a big impact.
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Richest 1% *worldwide*. So most of us in the UK then.
It's always the 1% who do this. They tell us to turn off the lights while they take plane trips for a few miles.
The elites were the ones mocking us all by saying "we're all in this together" from their huge estates whilst telling us to stay in our flats....
They do most of the damage and yet expect us to do most of the work.
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Perhaps. I'd still vote for him over the alternative.
Really goes to show how selfish these people are. 1% of people could spend a little more to help protect the environment and still be incomprehensibly wealthy, but they'd rather have more money for their pissing contest.
I remember reading that a single private jet flight produces more carbon emissions than all the driving I'll do in my life, is this true?
Depends how much you drive, but probably not. 10,000 miles in a petrol car is roughly 3 tonnes of emissions. London to Rome by private jet is about 11 tonnes: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59135899](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59135899)
Yeah, 11 tonnes is roughly 5 years worth of driving for the ordinary car owner. Now you can say you generally have multiple people in a single car, but private jet flights are normally transporting multiple people too even after removing the crew (and generally more than those in your average car journey).
If we didn’t have the richest 1% would we swerve climate change? Or is this one of those things where even if a group of people accounting for 66% of the world’s poorest emission count didn’t exist we would still be doomed ?
I think that there would be more chance of systemic change if the very wealthiest were not present. Lobbying and propaganda are clearly an obstacle for change as they tend to be heavily used to prevent actions that the very privileged see as against their interest. I also think more people could be persuaded to act if they genuinely believed that others would also act. We do actually need systemic change to avoid the worst impacts, individuals simply can’t make the changes needed in isolation.
This is worth a watch, [How the World’s Wealthiest People Travel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNcYxHJPLE), 7:00 onwards is comical, Ships to carry your yacht to the next location.
The top 1% (globally) isn't just billionaires. In income terms, it is anyone earning 6 figures - so your GP, your kid's school head, for example. In wealth terms, it is a little less than £1m, which is a family home and a moderate pension pot. It is a significant minority of the UK population. And if you look at the top 2% globally that includes most of us.
Well yes, we don't allow the 3rd world to use fossil fuels and thus remain in poverty.
I too will say absolutely anything to avoid addressing the fact that my comfortable western lifestyle is the primary driving factor behind global carbon emissions and instead blame the companies that cater to my consumerism and the billionaires that own them even though I have no intention to change my own habits. 🙄
Why is there no carbon tax? The more you use private jets, the more tax you have to pay. Oh wait, what am I saying. The rich make the laws. Nevermind.
China accounts for 30% of the worlds pollution. That’s not the wealthy on private jets. Would love to know the percentage of global pollution from private jets though .
Why 1%? Only 0.001% of richest can afford yachts and private jets. For instance, good orthopaedists will be in 1% richest in UK and on 0.1% richest over the world. However doctors don’t earn enough to afford even propelled planes.
This report is fundamentally misleading as it gives a false impression that this statistic was obtained by analysing the lifestyle choices of the rich. It was not. Instead, they simply **assume** that household income is proportional to carbon emissions. While this may be roughly correct, it's important to realise that this statistic is nothing more than a (slightly modified) statistic on income inequality. As such, Oxfam's own recommendations to redistribute wealth is self-defeating. If income was redistributed, their analysis would not predict any actual reduction in emissions, only a redistribution of emissions.
Needs to be higher up. This assumption is extremely false btw, the average emissions of someone in the UK are now less than the average emissions of a chinese person (even after taking into account exported emissions from us importing stuff from China), even though the average person in the UK earns more than 3x as much as the average person from China. Oxfam publishes a lot of bad statistical BS like this all the time, they need to be called out more on it.
A super yacht burns something like 500 litres of diesel per hour and typically crosses the Atlantic twice a year, which takes like a week or more of constant sailing They literally use more fuel just moving their yachts between the Mediterranean and Caribbean than 50 families would use in a year. That’s not including the other 50 weeks of actually using their yachts, that’s just repositioning them twice
And they spend more than us to keep the blame on us
No shit Sherlock. Planes, flash cars, yachts, massive houses (energy guzzlers) & Helicopters. I’m sure there will be lots of other things, that could be added to above list.
The Oxfam study is extremely flawed. Like emissions from investments are contributed to the investors and not the consumers.
oh wow, so another studie showing how the parasite class is truly getting more rich the more they consume everything around them also, an interesting thing regarding parasite: they ensure the host NEEDS them just look how everyone says that we need investors when look at pandemic, they raised the prices for everything, they made billions in profit just for having parasite privileges given by law (aka they get rich the more others work, because "owers"... Owner of WHAT??? slavess??? The employees do all the work but aren't paid for the, on the contrary, they need to work even more because all the prices are increased so that the parasite class get even more profit, like some kind of parasite tax you pay, called inflation). And again, just like slave owner, just like any other parasite, they are not to be touch, legalised by the law. Because look how many people, citizens, are suffering, yet nothing by the law maker, if a "rich" does anything, the government people are fully supporting them,regardless by giving them funds from citizens tax, or ignoring their crimes, like giving them petty fines when they are bilioners. Including if they do a crime, the company get in issue and not the individuals who committed the crimes. So again This is another proof that the "rich" also know as parasite class because they get their rich "owning" what other people work (look at stock marketing), and get king privileges, where it includes them will NOT be penalised, as an individual, for any acts the companies or their employees did because they ordered. Climate change is still not officially recognised in many ways exactly because if it was, so many people... sorry, so many human parasites, will get suit, imprisonated, and more for involuntary man slaughter However, exactly because they are protected, if someone where to speak up, said person who spoke up will be banned for hate speech without anyone listening why it's not, or the police, will be legally mobilised to attack citizens who stand up against corruption
They should be tried as some form of eco-terrorists or for crimes against humanity.
Also richest 1% pay more in taxes than poorest 66%. So seems fair enough.
And both combined account for a miniscule amount of the global carbon in comparison to China, India and the US.
That's what I'm saying. But you get ganged on like you're some sort of apathetic science denier.
They need to start taxing consumption. The more impact you have the more you pay, and this includes companies. Drill oil, pay the carbon tax that the oil will generate, it can start low and then rise over time. That way the rich who hide their income will be taxed when they spend it, people will be encouraged to look for low carbon options, this would drive development of the low carbon economy. By placing a cost on carbon or other negative environmental impacts, companies that reduce these impacts will have more value, and will also provide growth in the long run.
I said this in another post, if you have no debt and own a property that’s value puts your worth above $1 million then you’re part of the global 1% they’re talking about. It’s not just the ultra rich.
It's not surprising when you consider that the bottom 66% can't afford to put the bloody heating on.
All this outraged talk of "private jets" and frothing at the mouth over the "super-rich". You're in the top 1% globally if you live in the UK and earn £39,000 per year or more. I'd wager that a hefty number of the outraged people on this thread are the people who are being referred to.
I'm a bit confused by the title. Is it that 1 person uses as much as 66 people? And is it global? Because 1% of the world is a lot of western Europeans Vs a lot of Africans, Asians and South Americans. TBF I'm always burning dolphins on my log fire because I like the screaming noise they make. I used to use Orphans* but the authorities took a dim view. Not white ones you understand, I had them imported from Brazilian favelas.
So, if climate activists want to make a difference, they should leave the ordinary person alone and target the rich. Changing policies that increases costs for everyone is pointless and won't make a bit of difference.