Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels.
This is not a billionaire’s climate emissions.
If the car I own tallies onto my carbon footprint, surely the corporations owned by the billionaires enjoy the same designation.
They’re no different because of what they own.
You would have to take a look at who the stakeholders are at each company. Corporate “ownership” isn’t the same as sole proprietorship.
Did you read the article at all?
They all get to enjoy the responsibility (as they all shared the benefits).
If you lend your car to your cousin for a cross- country road trip, does your cousin’s road trip count as his emissions, yours, or should it be double counted?
Similarly, my 401k has an S&P 500 fund in it, which contains some fossil fuel stocks. Does my carbon footprint go up every month by whatever fraction of a percent of Exxon my retirement fund buys each month?
When you eat a steak, whose emissions are the methane the cow burped? Yours? The ranchers? Cargills? Walmart’s?
Honestly, consumption-based accounting makes way more sense to me.
Double count that shit. We’re not going to get out of this hole if we split hairs semantically.
Triple count it if you have a fleet of vehicles over 10.
Double count it for dual axles and ANY truck driving while not hauling a load greater than a passenger vehicle is capable of moving.
Consumption accounting is impossible when the only options available to the consumer fuck them over completely.
Cheap subsidized beef means I’m going to buy it to feed my family.
Cheap subsidized gas means I can keep polluting with little cost.
CAFE laws making vehicles fucking gigantic make it impossible to consume less fuel.
Companies and laws dictate our consumption not the other way around. Tax or kill the wealthy, then we can talk.
It should be double counted since we need to do something about it. Cousin could pay the carbon tax on gas for usage, and owner could pay a carbon tax for milage usage at the end of the year.
I’m aware that this is a non-starter, but it would be a good start for getting overall emissions down. The billionaires should also pay a carbon tax above and beyond what the corporations pay, as a double incentive to stop polluting the planet for profit. Take away the profit, and companies will change.
Going to disagree with pure consumption based accounting.
Think there needs to be something about decision influence basis, otherwise the companies won’t have pressure to change as the “bill” is accounted for elsewhere
This kind of accounting is about generating clicks, ultimately.
We know the actual fixes for this.
Cap and trade fixed acid rain. Pigouvian taxes like a carbon tax work. Even a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend where you split the taxed money evenly among everyone works; it literally pays people to not pollute.
The Green New Deal is a fix.
Novel accounting schemes that generate headlines like this are explicitly not a fix because literally all they do is generate bad publicity for billionaires and ad revenue for the paper. There’s nothing real here.
But it does make a title that gets clicks.
Yeah - at best they are morally responsible for not choosing to invest in something else but in the end as long as there’s capitalism and people are creating demand for whatever polluting thing they procude someone else will step in
The Demand has to be slashed by making those products less profitable if the general public is not acting in their own interest because polluting is cheaper and more comfortable
Especially if people are just going directly to “eat the rich” after articles like this I really wonder what they think will happen if the oil-production is stopped completely from one day to the next? And that even assumes that noone will step up to continue the production - what if the state takes over the oil-company and spreads the emissions evenly among every citizen - would that solve the problem of climate change in their minds?
capitalism and people are creating demand for whatever polluting thing they procude someone else will step in
Capitalism is not why people like electricity, food, and entertainment. All of those things predate capitalism. The USSR contributed to climate change.
Anyone trying to make climate change a leftist issue is a moron. Every economic policy would contribute to climate change becaus every economic policy needs to guarantee heat, food, transport, etc.
I think there’s one big difference here: the capital holding class has fought tooth and nail against making solutions viable. They’ve pushed pro fossil fuel propaganda into everything from our commutes to schools. They’ve fought against acknowledgement of the realities of climate change and done nothing to try to move towards a more sustainable future, instead choosing to invest in lobbying against solutions to reduce demand such as carbon taxes, reduction of oil subsidies, increases in clean energy subsidies, and mass transit.
Capital is all-in on green investment right now so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
Oh you mean now after knowing about it for decades? They waited until it was too late.
Who is “they,” here?
Oh, look… an “enlightened centrist” has shown up to whitesplain that capitalist parasitism is actually poor people’s fault.
Yawn.
I’m as left as you can get without being straight up communist - I despise neoliberalism and think that countries should to a lot more to make billionaires nonexistent via redistribution of money and higher wealth- and inheritance-tax but for this issue it’s just not enough if everyone washes their hands in innocence and only points to them
sure their personal lifestyle is much shittier than the one from the average person but pinning the emissions from companies they own on them is just making things far too easy on the average person
People need to vote for a green transition and not for some shortsighted utopia of “if we just remove the billionaires climate change will be fixed” - that’s not the case as long as demand is still there
I despise neoliberalism
No. You don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t literally be regurgitating one of the fundamental tenets of neoliberal ideology - individual responsibility. Need to be reminded of this?
but pinning the emissions from companies they own on them is just making things far too easy on the average person
See that part up there? You know, the part where you blame capitalist parasitism on poor people?
People need to vote for a green transition
Riiiiight… how is this whole “voting harder” thing going for you?
I don’t say the single person is responsible - I say the population as a whole is - and for that to happen there needs to be a massive shift on the individual level as politicians won’t vote against most of their population.
It’s less about the individual responsibility for climate change but about a motivation to become politically active and get more people on board - leading by example is just a very low-level approach that everyone can do.
I’m not pinning anything on poor people - I’m just saying that pointing fingers will do literally nothing and I think we should work within the current democratic systems which in turn means that everyone is at least a bit responsible for who they vote for. And voting and advocating for a party that promises to cut down emissions of everyone is the most logical thing as just removing the billionaires won’t fix a thing if polluting isn’t made more expensive which definitely WILL influence everyone.
It just seems very immature to use this thing as a “get out of jail card” to continue flying every year and doing the shortest possible trips via car instead of taking the bike for a change or advocating for more bike infrastructure in cities.
It’s not going well because a lot of people seem to think they are not affected and want to ignore the whole issue until it’s too late and nature forces them to change - and it’s frustrating. Everyone should’ve started adapting to a more ecological lifestyle yesterday but that obviously didn’t happen. If it did it would be much easier to actually get politicians to change something
we should work within the current democratic systems
Well, that’s just fine and dandy… but that all depends on whether you actually have anything that can be called a “democratic” system with a straight face now does it?
Sooo… do you?
This is not a billionaire’s climate emissions.
Yes. It is.
“These people have an outsize political influence because of their enormous wealth, which they use to leverage local and national governments, gaining exemptions from taxes and privileges that allow them to pollute and to influence laws regulating pollution,” said Wilk, a professor of anthropology at Indiana University. “If you look at them as entities, some of them are rivalling states in terms of their influence.”
God. It makes me so fucking mad.
I wonder if there’s some simple way to completely halt the emissions from those twelve.
I can think of only one (or twelve, depending on how you look at it)
End carbon emissions with this one strange
trickbrick!The carbon footprints of the investments were calculated by examining the equity stakes that the billionaires held in companies. Estimates of the carbon impact of their holdings was calculated using the company’s declarations on scope 1 emissions – direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company – and scope 2, indirect emissions.
Scope 2 emissions are those from the products sold by the company. For example, if you fill your car up at Exxon, the emissions from you driving on that tank of gas is part of Exxon’s scope 2 emissions. The fossil fuel industry is mostly scope 2 emissions, while a company like Amazon is mostly scope 1 emissions.
(The Gates foundation has $1.4 billion invested in fossil fuel companies like BP)[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/gates-foundation-has-14bn-in-fossil-fuels-investments-guardian-analysis]. If you look at that article, Gates has the second- highest carbon footprint on that list of billionaires. Reading that article, it seems very likely that Gate’s emissions are mostly scope 2.
Completely halting Gates emissions, as calculated this way, would involve just shutting down whatever percentage of BP he owns. Gas prices would get higher, without actually solving any of the underlying issues causing that demand, like car-centric urban design. It’d likely do nothing, as other gas companies would start to pump more in the medium term and emissions would quickly go back up.
Minor correction, scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the use of purchased energy (generally electricity). What you are describing (driving your car that was filled at Exxon) is scope 3 emissions for Exxon.
I hope it’s a delicious way!
The secret’s in the sauce…
since they included pollution from the companies those people own (which is a very weird way to attribute it) not a thing will change as long as there’s demand for what those companies produce
sure, just have to close down all the industry. the millions of people employed in those industries will just have to find a different job. simple, innit?
I think the message that want to be passed by this article is probably pro-oil industry. It gives a false impression that we could tackle ecology not by changing our habits but just be mad at a few billionaires. And this is factually false.
Unlike wealth pollution is more equitably shared among people. Here in order to demultiply the calculated pollution of billionaires they introduced thier industry and the pollution of their employees somehow.
And while it is expected these people pollute more. Getting rid of them will not reduce the pollution as one could expect.
unfortunately everyone, even not the wealthiest will need to change how they live to have a visible impact on pollution. broadly speeking, not just CO2, as we have a lot more ecological problems than global warming. Note the focus on global warming alone is also a strategy to hide the real changes that need to ne made in order to prevent humanity to hurt itself too much by destroying its own ecosystem.
Edit: As I am being downvoted it looks people probably misunderstood my message. I would gladly get rid of super rich people. But while this would help, we would all still need to make efforts. Until we accept that we should change our way of life, we will not solve our balance with our ecosystem.
I think the message that want to be passed by this article is probably pro-oil industry.
It’s not even that
They specifically say that the numbers wouldn’t be this skewed if you didn’t count their companies as their own personal emissions.
It’s just a stupid article all around.
Cart before the horse. Get rid of the billionaires, then work on individual consumption. Some of us have been recycling and trying to save the environment most of our lives while Taylor Swift flies her private jet to Italy to get a gelato.
Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels.
Private jets aren’t great, but they’re objectively a tiny part of emissions. According to the EPA,
If we banned private jets, we’d decrease emissions by somewhere under 2%, assuming we’re just banning the larger luxury private jets Taylor Swift is chauffered in, not the recreational 2-4 seat single prop aircraft that pilots own. Taylor Swift’s jet was in the news for polluting as much as 1,184.8 average people. That’s not equitable, but objectively it’s a pretty small part of the problem.
Passenger vehicles are 58% of transportation emissions. If you include freight trucks, they’re 83% of transportation emissions. Insisting on eliminating 2% of emissions before we even think about reducing 58% of emissions is the definition of putting the cart before the horse.
The problem with driving isn’t with individual people deciding to drive instead of walking 2 hours to get groceries. It’s the car-centric Euclidean zoning and sprawling (sub)urban design that makes driving the only practical option. If you can get the average person to drive 4% less by e.g. giving them a neighborhood pub they can bike to in 5 minutes, you’ve done more to decrease emissions than by grounding every private jet.
I mean, don’t get me wrong - we can do both at the same time. But Taylor Swift’s emissions are objectively more a matter of equity and optics than substance. You don’t fix climate change by hyperfixating on eliminating 2% of emissions.
I’m sorry. My comment wasn’t clear. Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
I think we shouldn’t wait for the billionaires to disappear to make efforts.
Saying as long as billionaires are polluting I can still pollute as usual is simply dismissing our own responsibility.
Even though, I agree, billionaires should be the first to make the largest effort.
Keep the status quo. Got it. Hope that works out for you.
while Taylor Swift flies her private jet to Italy to get a gelato.
That would have a negligible impact on climate change
Almost everyone has a negligible impact when taken individually, that’s no excuse. Flying is terrible, private jets even more so.
Everyone has a negligible impact as an individual, yes.
But people act as groups, responding to the incentives given to them. There’s a reason why the average person in Houston drives a lot more than the average person in Amsterdam. It’s because Houston has the widest freeway in the world and is very car-oriented, and Amsterdam has world-class bike infrastructure and is very walkable and transitable. It’s not because Amsterdam is filled with virtuous environmentalists while Houston is filled with evil people who hate the planet.
And as groups, people add up. In the US, 58% of transportation emissions are from cars, SUVs and pickups, while only 2% are from non- commercial planes. On the personal level, private jets are terrible. Added up to a societal level, they’re a tiny part of the problem, while cars are a giant part of the problem.
There are billions of us, we can look at more than one angle at a time. If we can’t all help on the issue du jour we should just pack it in?
Or let’s talk about how that air travel metric is likely bullshit. We barely do full lifecycle emissions for cars, do you think that metric did that for planes? Their tires? Their mandatory retirement duty cycle for all kinds of components up to their frames? They aren’t expensive as hell for the prestige of it.
All human air traffic combined is 2% of emissions. A private jet is not a big deal.
Calling out private jets from rich people is a conservative tactic to make wealthy people who advocate for climate policy look like hypocrites. It’s a nonsensical position that was never intended to be thought through. It’s a kneejerk slogan for the boomer hordes.
But it’s actually a problem. It measures whole percentage points, it’s not a rounding error.
Dismissing an issue or person because conservatives are also using it as a punching bag doesn’t remove the problem, it just lets the conservatives control the narrative. I don’t think participating in that polarizing behavior is good or useful.
That’s all air travel. All.
100,000 flights and 6 million people every day. A private jet is a drop in the bucket.
Arguing semantics? All flights are equal? A loaded a380 is just like a 6 passenger Lear?
If we argue that someone should take the bus or bike instead of drive, isn’t this the same argument?
Article says otherwise. We need to eliminate all billionaires.
The article literally does not say otherwise. Consider reading it.
Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds
Title
Yes, now click the article and read it
Totally did: And you’re annoying.
Oxfam’s research found that the emissions from the investments of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire. This is more than a million times higher than the average emissions created by the bottom 90% of the world’s population.
We all know the solution. It’s only 12 of them. It can’t be that difficult.
Can’t wait to be rid of Taylor swift music
Good luck finding any resources to do a damn thing about it.
2.1 mili homes
I’m… quite sure they do worse than that.
I’d be interested in knowing how much more emissions come specifically from private plane owners. Not just billionaires, but celebrities that use their planes to fly short distances
Roughly 0%. The combined total of all air traffic, 6 million flyers every day, is about 2% of emissions
All private plane use is going to be a tiny percentage of that already small percentage.
That seems way too low…
Just curious, do people here have a 401k, money market accounts or IRAs? I’d be interested if people know what companies their savings account is actually invested in. Especially at the corporate level where you have a long term blended retirement fund, I’m sure some people will be surprised…
With pensions gone and Social Security unlikely to exist when Millennials and younger retire, we have no choice but to hand our retirement savings to Wall Street. Otherwise it’s impossible to even beat inflation long term, let alone to have enough compound interest to actually live off of.
You can set up your 401k to only invest in good companies, but again, it’s unlikely to be enough to actually retire off of. I wasted my best savings years trying to do this and failed. I don’t like it, but index funds that include small pieces of evil companies are pretty much the only valid option.
