Reports on the need for policy reform to curb emissions are coming thick and fast. The Lethal Humidity global council of scientists is alerting the world to the fact that the concept of carbon offsetting just doesn’t stack up, quite literally as trees fall down and die, emitting carbon dioxide!
Oxfam’s new briefing paper, ‘Carbon Inequality Kills: Why curbing the excessive emissions of an elite few can create a sustainable planet for all’ delineates the contribution of the richest 1% to global warming and the misery of the majority…
The only way to beat climate breakdown and deliver social justice is to radically reduce inequality. This briefing paper reveals the catastrophic climate impacts of the richest individuals in the world, and proposes taking urgent action to protect people and the planet. What little carbon dioxide we can still safely emit is being burned indiscriminately by the super-rich.
We share new evidence of how the yachts, jets and polluting investments of the 50 richest billionaires are accelerating the climate crisis. Oxfam’s research shows that the emissions of the world’s super-rich 1% are causing economic losses of trillions of dollars; contributing to huge crop losses; and leading to millions of excess deaths.
As global temperatures continue to rise, risking the lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty and precarity, we must act now to curb the emissions of the super-rich and make rich polluters pay.
Oxfam points out that the carbon emissions don’t only arise from rockets and super yachts but also from the chosen investments of the extremely wealthy. The portfolios of the 50 billionaires in the study were almost twice as polluting as an investment in the main US stock index. Almost 40% of their shareholdings were in emissions-intensive industries such as oil, mining, shipping and cement, companies which use PR and lobbying to maintain the status quo.
Oxfam is calling for fairer taxes on extreme wealth, a call which many of the most wealthy have made themselves.
In addition to this, in and of itself Climate Income, if applied more or less universally and made taxable income, would play a large part in curbing the wealthiest’s carbon emissions by steadily raising the price of fossil fuel rich products and making fossil free products and investments more attractive.
Another new report mean