How the rich and super-rich are damaging the climate

A flight from New York to St. Tropez, a huge ten-bedroom villa, a fleet of cars, gold jewelry, silk clothes, a yacht in the harbor – there is no question that this does not, on the whole, result in a good environmental balance. A current Oxfam report shows that the lives of the rich are more damaging to the climate than those of the poor.

According to data analyzes by development organization Oxfam, the extreme consumption of the rich and super-rich is accelerating global warming to an almost obscene degree. The richest one percent of the world’s population produced as many climate-damaging greenhouse gases in 2019 as the five billion people who make up the poorer two-thirds, according to an Oxfam report released Monday.

The report ‘Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99 Percent’ is based on the scientific knowledge that greenhouse gas emissions increase with private income and wealth. The reasons include more frequent air travel, larger homes and more climate-damaging consumption in general – in extreme cases in the form of luxury villas, mega yachts and private jets.

“Through their extreme consumption, the rich and super-rich are fueling the climate crisis, which threatens the livelihoods of billions of people with heat waves, droughts and floods, especially in the low-income countries of the Global South,” says Oxfam. speaker Manuel Schmitt, who explains the results of the report.

These results show the effects particularly clearly:

In 2019, the richest percentage of the world’s population consisted of people with an annual income of more than US$140,000 (124,000 francs). The richest percentage of the Swiss population earns an annual income of more than $365,000 (323,000 francs).

The consumer-oriented lifestyle of the rich and super-rich produces about 105 tons of CO2 per year, while the poorest emit only about three tons of CO2. According to Oxfam, one billionaire is as damaging to the climate as one million people. That’s why countless researchers, including French economist Thomas Piketty, have long called on people, not states, to foot the bill for their carbon emissions.

The May 2023 United Nations Progress Report shows that the world is on the brink of climate catastrophe and that current measures and plans to tackle the crisis are inadequate. Model calculations show that the 1.5 degree target can no longer be achieved with the current use of fossil fuels. This endangers the life chances of more than three billion people.

More money is needed for international climate finance worldwide. Oxfam is therefore calling for taxes on climate-damaging companies and the assets and income of the super-rich. This would significantly increase the financial space for the transformation to renewable energies and improve the capacity to deal with climate damage.

The current economic system, its fixation on making profits and the exploitation of natural resources must also be examined, says Oxfam. The report is based on figures from the Stockholm Environment Institute, which draws on data from the Global Carbon Atlas, the World Inequality Database, the Penn World Tables on Income (PWT) and figures from the World Bank.