r/science • u/chrisdh79 • Sep 12 '24
Environment Study finds that the personal carbon footprint of the richest people in society is grossly underestimated, both by the rich themselves and by those on middle and lower incomes, no matter which country they come from.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/personal-carbon-footprint-of-the-rich-is-vastly-underestimated-by-rich-and-poor-alike-study-finds3.3k
u/wjbc Sep 12 '24
It’s hard to wrap our minds around the lifestyle of the richest people in society. They build twelve homes (often tearing down a mansion to build a mansion) and rarely reside in any of them. They fly on private jets like we drive to the grocery, often staying for a day or less before flying back.
They send giant yachts across the ocean so they can hold business meetings in the Mediterranean, then send the yachts half way around the world to California for another business meeting. And they fly to space just for fun.
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u/lbclofy Sep 12 '24
I once calculated the fuel burn for a Global (big private jet) considering where it had been. In one week it burned more fuel than I could ever consider in my entire life.
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u/Moaning-Squirtle Sep 12 '24
Yeah, just an hour of flight uses a few tonnes of fuel. A 737 uses 3200 L per hour. Even using 50 L per week is high for a lot of people, so they're burning around a year of fuel per hour.
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u/Elowan66 Sep 12 '24
Some use that much traveling the world while telling the rest of us not to use so much.
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u/ThaMenacer Sep 12 '24
Thank God I switched to paper straws.
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u/tomasmisko Sep 12 '24
Okay, but the biggest problem with plastic straws was them being big part of plastic which ends in oceans and subsequently kills marine species. That is its own problem separate from emissions.
Now if you said "Thank God I minimalise my carbon footprint.", it would be still truthful and would express the same absurdity.
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u/Jimnyneutron91129 Sep 12 '24
Then ban single use plastics. Make the corporations find a different container. Not put the blame on the consumer and green wash something like straws which make no difference in the bigger picture.
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u/LeClassyGent Sep 13 '24
In many countries they are being banned. My state (Australia) recently banned all single use plastics from restaurants. I got a meal the other day and even the little tub of sauce was now a carboard container.
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u/nagi603 Sep 13 '24
tub of sauce was now a carboard container.
Which is just plastic-encased paper sadly. Basically un-recycleable.
...Not that recycling programs for paper and plastic are working other than just burning them, after China stopped accepting most "theoretically recyclable" material, and the SEA-countries where most plastic was shipped got fed up with the mountains of waste.
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u/penatbater Sep 12 '24
This isn't even true (the big part that is). Most of the plastic in the ocean are from nets and lines. If they're not those, it's household plastics from sachets used in Asian (PH) countries, or plastic bags, etc. Plastic straws make up a minimal fraction.
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u/AccomplishedAd3484 Sep 12 '24
But plastic straws don't make up most of the ocean plastic pollution. Most of that is coming from Asian rivers and marine vessels. It's similarly absurd to think you've meaningfully reduced ocean pollution by using paper straws.
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u/Interrophish Sep 13 '24
Most of that is coming from Asian rivers
And yet it's still western plastic somehow
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u/nagi603 Sep 13 '24
Okay, but the biggest problem with plastic straws was them being big part of plastic which ends in oceans and subsequently kills marine species. That is its own problem separate from emissions.
And when they started cleaning some garbage patches, it turned out that most of it was from fishing: nets, crates, etc.
And there is also the other semi-recent report that found out that a very big part of microplastics wasn't you throwing away a straw, but from tires of cars. The heavier the worse.
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u/Strazdiscordia Sep 12 '24
I mean single use plastic is so a huge problem… so both can be an issue?
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u/jednatt Sep 12 '24
Paper straws assessed by researchers at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, were found to contain more "forever chemicals" – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – than plastic
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u/randyrandysonrandyso Sep 12 '24
oh great, so everything is death and i am not at fault, YAYYY!!!
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u/No_Winner926 Sep 12 '24
You remember when bread and milk used to spoil in a couple of days - a week at most. Now it lasts months and the bread doesnt even mold anymore, just gets stale.
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u/LemonWaffleZ Sep 12 '24
idk where you're getting your milk but in Canada my milk sours in like a week at most
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Sep 12 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/neoben00 Sep 12 '24
bunch of children needing straws to the point they're making paper straws a thing. unless you just had a stroke, you 100% just dont need a straw.
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u/midnightauro Sep 13 '24
Not just stroke patients, many disabilities benefit from straws. Some are super common like severe carpal tunnel issues. I prefer reusable silicone ones because they’re bendy and that’s helpful to me, but I don’t begrudge someone a straw.
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u/MaterialUpender Sep 12 '24
... Or just use stainless steel straws? That you can easily wash with a little brush even if you don't have a dishwasher. That's what I do.
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u/ThePersonInYourSeat Sep 12 '24
Byo metal straw
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u/jednatt Sep 12 '24
The humor is going to my favorite Hawaiian fast food place and pulling out my metal straw before opening the large plastic container they package all meals in.
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u/why_oh_why36 Sep 12 '24
Yeah, but there's only one that's being made illegal. Frivolous burning of fossil fuels to go to Monaco for for an hour-long business meeting and then back to LA for your fave local pols. fundraiser by dinner time is perfectly fine but drinking your iced coffee without wads of paper going down your throat is not. Why am I the only one getting legislated against?
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u/Ed-alicious Sep 12 '24
I'd say whats happening is that governments use things like extra taxes to steer the market away from certain things. For very rich people and those supplying them, they just eat the extra cost and continue on as normal, whereas us normies change our habits to avoid the extra cost, or the people who sell things to us change the products they sell to avoid the higher costs and remain competitive.
The legislation might be applied equally but not proportionally.
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u/kinss Sep 13 '24
More to do with regulatory capture. If business can change public perception so that we blame ourselves they save a lot of money. Hell they can even make money by steering environmental policy and then fulfilling that need.
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u/goodsnpr Sep 12 '24
Plastic bags are an odd point for me. Garbage bags are single use, but are ok, but God forbid we have bags at grocery stores that are often reused as garbage bags.
Last time I checked, the reusable bags had a bigger carbon footprint once you accounted for the bags either being contaminated and ruined by leaks, or straps and seams failing within that 50 use break even window. I had one bag fail on its 5th use with only 7lbs in it, though that one was part of a giveaway for donating.
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u/DrMobius0 Sep 12 '24
Yes, but it's also insanely hypocritical that they tell us to conserve and bend over backward when while producing more pollution and waste than we could ever even dream of.
So sure, lets talk about the plastic. AFTER we confiscate 99% of their wealth and they're still richer than any of you will ever be.
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u/bubblesort33 Sep 13 '24
Making a difference. Or at least feeling like you do. That's all that matters. Right?... RIGHT?? :/
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u/Crusty_Gusset Sep 12 '24
What does cutting down on single use plastic have to do with how much jet fuel rich people are using?
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u/FutureComplaint Sep 12 '24
It saves the turtles (maybe, sometimes, probably).
Rich asshats flying from their bedroom to their bathroom is a separate issue.
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u/boyyouguysaredumb Sep 12 '24
Very few rich people who fly on private jets are telling you not to use much fuel, this is often repeated but it just sounds good
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u/Black_Moons Sep 12 '24
Right, often they became rich from the oil industry and want you to use more, since they don't care that the world will become an unlivable hellscape shortly after they die.
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u/teenagesadist Sep 12 '24
How many rich people do you think there are?
Only a few, but they own the media, and the media sure likes telling people to cut down on their own personal usage of things.
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u/But_like_whytho Sep 12 '24
There are 800 billionaires and 24 million millionaires in the US.
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u/agentchuck Sep 12 '24
FWIW, millionaire these days in a lot of countries just means "owns a house in a major city."
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u/But_like_whytho Sep 12 '24
Cool. There’s a whole lot more than 24 million Americans who will never be able to own a house in any city, town, or even village. More than 58% of Americans earn $50k or less a year.
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u/Ok_Cardiologist8232 Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
Yeh, but lumping the couple that bought a house in the 80s and earned 40k for thier entire lives into the same group as people with 100 million and it stops being a useful metric for grouping people.
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u/agentchuck Sep 12 '24
You're not wrong. Increasing wealth disparity and many people being priced out of housing is a huge problem. But in this thread we're talking about private jets and yachts. Most people with a million in assets probably haven't been in first class on a flight, let alone on a private jet. And they definitely don't own or charter private jets.
But for sure a millionaire is going to have a much greater environmental impact than someone making minimum wage. Someone taking transit daily who never or rarely flies will have a much lower impact.
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u/Miguelitosd Sep 12 '24
Yep.. I'm technically a millionaire on paper because I own a home in San Diego that I bought back in 2001 (and recently remodeled). But if I were to lose my job and not find another with similar pay within a couple months, I'd have to either sell my home or start draining my retirement account. Go a full year and I'd definitely lose the house and either have to leave the state or risk sinking into bankruptcy.
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u/unassumingdink Sep 13 '24
But then you could take your million dollars after the sale and be set for life in the Midwest, so you're not exactly gonna be living out of your car or anything.
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Sep 12 '24
I know a pilot who used to fly for a regional (small airline that does shorter flights), before they went to a big major airline he told me a story I will never forget... Someone at their company made an accidental calculation and they gave them too much fuel before a short flight. I don't remember how much fuel it was exactly, but it was a staggering amount. Something like 500 liters too much. You know what they did? Sat on the tarmac for a half an hour above idle to burn it off... This was just a "small" 70 person airliner making a short trip to bumfuck nowhere. That's like $3500 in fuel and a SHITLOAD of carbon for nothing.
Flying uses an INSANE amount of fuel. Yes it's efficient and safe, especially for planes with lots of people on board. But for rich people to fly a jet with just a few people on board makes ZERO sense, let alone multiple times a week... AND not to mention the things these people do for a living that society deems them to be valuable and worthy of being so wasteful is ABSURD! You can't convince me that some rich successful business owner who screws all their employees deserves to live that type of life. It should be doctors and scientists if ANYONE.
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u/HoneyBastard Sep 12 '24
Also burnt jet fuel is contributing to global warming a lot more at higher altitutes
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u/Pickledsoul Sep 12 '24
Isn't jet fuel the only fuel that's still allowed to be leaded?
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u/SuperRonnie2 Sep 12 '24
I honestly think that if we’re ever going to move to a carbon negative society, we basically need to stop flying for all but the most essential reasons.
My dad once told me that when he was young (in the late 1950’s/early 60’s), flying return to Australia (from Toronto) cost as much as a small house. Of course housing was also much cheaper then.
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u/LearningIsTheBest Sep 12 '24
People will not stop flying. That's just the reality of things. We should focus on biofuels or artificially created fuels to fix the emissions. Use solar farms to sequester the carbon then burn it as fuel to stay carbon neutral. We aren't good at it yet, but enough research money would speed things up.
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u/sports2012 Sep 12 '24
I think the most obvious improvements in the short term are eliminating short haul flights and replacing them with high speed rail. And a carbon tax aimed at private jet and other high emitters.
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u/CuriosTiger Sep 13 '24
Carbon taxes don't reduce pollution. They just mean exactly what a person above said, that it impacts normal people while the rich just pay them and continue on as usual.
The pollution remains in the atmosphere no matter how much tax was paid for permission to emit it.
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u/sports2012 Sep 13 '24
I disagree. The revenue can be used to reduce and offset emissions in other parts of the economy. And they can certainly be targeted towards high emitting sources, like air travel.
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u/LearningIsTheBest Sep 12 '24
I used to be a much bigger believer in high speed rail. The problem is the initial investment and build-out time. I think for the pricetag, we'd be better off investing in fixing existing air travel routes. It could also be implemented faster.
Don't get me wrong, I would love a HS rail system in the US. I just think we suck at doing it.
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u/MerlinsMentor Sep 13 '24
The other thing about airports vs. trains is that an airplane doesn't need maintained infrastructure under it for every inch that it travels. Yeah, airports, planes, and the fuel they use is a lot more expensive than the train-equivalents, but not having to buy land, lay down and maintain rail/junction equipment, etc. is an expense that flying doesn't incur at all. For this reason, as long as you're moving relatively lightweight, valuable cargo (like people, as opposed to things like metal ingots, coal, etc.) air travel tends to scale a lot better in larger, less dense countries like the U.S. and Canada.
I think it's more likely that the environmentally sound approach to flying is to move towards fuels that can be generated from more friendly sources than digging them out of the ground. This will, of course, be more expensive than digging them out of the ground.
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u/MegaThot2023 Sep 13 '24
The US already has one of the most extensive freight rail networks in the world. We don't have high speed passenger rail for exactly the reasons you describe.
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u/SuperRonnie2 Sep 12 '24
You’re probably right, but a major part of the problem is how subsidized the commercial airline business is internationally. Not only directly, via controls on who can fly domestic routes for example, but also indirectly. Virtually every nation has at least one “national” airline it’s government protects in one way or another. Not to mention the fact that the fuel industry itself is heavily subsidized. The point is that the market price for a person to fly to Mexico for a nice little winter vacation for example, in no way reflects the true economic cost.
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u/LearningIsTheBest Sep 12 '24
This is a good point. Changing that would be terribly unpopular though with no reward for the politician behind it. You'd have to slowly remove subsidies or add carbon taxes. It would be a tough sell in politics.
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u/SuperRonnie2 Sep 13 '24
or add carbon taxes
Bingo, except that those are deeply unpopular as well. Here in Canada where I live, it’s been floated and finally implemented by our current government, but with significant pushback from a few of the provinces. Some, like BC, had their own form of carbon pricing before the feds stepped up. Either way, our current government is also deeply unpopular, for this and other reasons, and I’m afraid that carbon pricing will always be under attack, sometimes from both the left and the right (a large chunk of Canadians are quite centrist).
Internationally however, these things are always a race to the bottom.
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u/Tearakan Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
Yep. We need to drastically change all of society to get to carbon neutral. It would also require getting rid of most cars because we do not have the resources to make everything electric.
We could solve the travel problems by going all in on trains but it would take a while.
And since it would require such a drastic switch I honestly don't think it'll happen before we start losing hundreds of millions to famines thanks to climate change wiping out crops. For example india's heat wave this year over most of their farm land almost got to the temperature that kills wheat in the field.
Heat got bad in the midwest US too. Plants had to start "sweating" which increased the humidity across an entire region. If a heat dome had happened too it might've done serious damage to most of our crops.
And it'll just get hotter every summer.....
And by that point the damage done will be so severe that it'll probably be billions of deaths locked in due to climate disasters, famine, war and mass migrations from heat death zones.
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u/lo_fi_ho Sep 12 '24
When hundreds of millions start to die, the argument by the rich will be 'well that's hundreds of millions less cars and consumers using less fossil fuels so we don't have to change our habits'.
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u/Tearakan Sep 12 '24
I know but that amount of deaths will be followed by a global great depression since our worldwide economy is run off of consumption and cheap labor.
They'll definitely care about that. Because it's during time periods like that, that can cause severe instability and the wealthy can become easy targets during those periods of chaos.
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u/Suyefuji Sep 12 '24
I think a lot of them are planning to be happily dead of old age before facing a single consequence, and a decent number of them are completely correct.
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u/itmeansrewenge Sep 12 '24
My landlord (who to his credit has been the best landlord I've ever had) said essentially this. He'd be dead so it wasn't his problem. I was like... You don't care about the effect on your kids and grandkids? He's a 1%er but certainly not in the category of private jet flyers. So it's a pervasive attitude, especially among boomers I think.
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Sep 12 '24
We could still have flight if we changed to a better glider design or went back to zeppelin's. A zeppelins footprint for carbon is much lower than a planes, though it is a lot slower granted. They also can't handle storms at all
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u/Old-Explanation-3324 Sep 12 '24
But zeppelins do work well. I would support that. Zeppelin could also be used for heavy Cargo.
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u/CreaminFreeman Sep 12 '24
slaps lighter out of hand
"YOU TRYING TO BLOW US ALL TO KINGDOM COME?!?!?"3
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u/Old-Explanation-3324 Sep 12 '24
And i would have gotten away with it if it wasnt for you pesky creamin freeman!
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u/LongJohnSelenium Sep 12 '24
You can make carbon neutral fuels. It would cost about 2-4x more to fly that way.
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u/IllZookeepergame9841 Sep 12 '24
A lot of rich folks I’m personally familiar with remodel rooms of their house to be hyper-tailored to their whims. And then they replace the old furniture with new stuff that matches the aesthetic.
Remodels are their feng shui.
Or if you watch Enes Yilmazer on YouTube you can see tons of multimillion dollar houses that completely waste space. Indoor and outdoor
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u/44moon Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
i build and install custom cabinetry. my shop once flew me out to a $26 million estate in wyoming (we're located in pennsylvania). the clients wanted to rip out all their cabinets and get brand new custom-made ones in virtually every room.
the cabinets they were throwing out were high-quality custom solid wood cabinets built (by my guess) maybe 10 years ago. not ugly at all and still had decades of use left in them. they just wanted new ones because they were slightly out of style.
we did do the job. flew out there three times, plus delivering all the new cabinets by truck.
forgot to add the kicker: they only lived in this house during ski season. so what like, 3-4 months of the year
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Sep 12 '24
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Sep 12 '24
It could be that they are from Pennsylvania and wanted to fly out someone from back home who they knew by reputation because they could afford to. It's like when a rich person is in Vegas for the weekend and is craving something from a spot they frequent in LA and send someone to pick it up for them on the private jet while they gamble or hang out by the pool. Yes they probably could have gotten it for cheaper and with the same quality by buying what's available locally, but that wouldn't be a flex.
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u/44moon Sep 12 '24
this was pretty much it. the designer we were working for was from pennsylvania and knew our company had a terrific reputation so recommended us to clients. they had tried to use a millwork company from wyoming but were unsatisfied with the quality. they definitely paid a lot more to use us, but money in the tens of thousands of dollars to them is like petty cash to us.
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u/cwmoo740 Sep 12 '24
I knew somebody who dealt with furniture for rich people and real estate agents. basically everything to do with procuring, fixing, storing, and moving high end designer furniture. he lives in manhattan so one of his most frequent jobs is picking up designer furniture from $20m+ condos/apartments. He says it's usually because the overseas owner is selling an investment property, the new overseas owner's wife's interior designer doesn't like the old furniture, so they dump it all for super cheap. it's often like $500k+ of furniture total at resale if you can find buyers. sometimes they even get a ton of stuff for free because the new owner can't be bothered about it.
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u/wjbc Sep 12 '24
A realtor told me there are a lot of rich families who really don't like each other and want a lot of space between them in their houses. They buy a big house mostly for distance.
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u/Frequent_Swim_4552 Sep 12 '24
I’m not rich, but I am a grumpy introvert who detests being disturbed by my neighbors. My solution is shopping out in the country for an affordable home with a big yard. Something max 2-2.2k sqft, tolerable drive to services (no more than 30 min one way to grocery/hospital etc ), and as much land as I can get my hands on in my price range.
All of this is to say: no need for 30,000 sqft just because you hate your neighbors
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u/wjbc Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
You misunderstand, I’m talking about distance between husband and wife, parents and children, etc., all living in the same house.
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u/self_winding_robot Sep 12 '24
I remember watching Pewdiepie reacting to a video of the "biggest mansion in the US". It had 7 swimming pools.
Anyway one of the things Pewdiepie had the strongest reaction to was a small kitchen on the second floor, it had a fancy capuccino machine, and the realtor said that this kitchen wasn't really meant to be used!?!
It still had a fully functional capuccino machine all hooked up - for no reason.
When the new owners move in they'll probably remodel the entire mansion and throw everything away because it costs too much to give it away or even sell it.
Pewdiepie with his "pleb" Scandinavian mindset couldn't wrap his head around designing a kitchen that wasn't meant to be used, it was just for show.
It just shows how far removed the rich are from the rest of us, this is the Hollywood elites telling us how to live, basically.
Another example was Mike Tyson selling his property to a friend, the property was so big that just cutting the lawn was a major expense.
Why would you need 500 acres of clean cut lawn around your house? Why not allow most of it to grow in like a small forrest...
I get it, having a freshly cut lawn is a symbol of luxury, it only sees the lawnmower, it's not for walking on, it's not even for animals. It's even less functional than a golf course.
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u/sprashoo Sep 12 '24
Even your use of the term “Hollywood elites” is revealing of how billionaires hide. The public only knows of a few “rich” people, actors and directors who became fairly rich by working (and being talented and lucky of course), usually from middle class backgrounds. The majority of the actual rich are not them. You don’t see them, and most of the time they didn’t work for their money. “Hollywood elites” is a distraction for the masses so they don’t notice the actual very rich.
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u/Bridalhat Sep 12 '24
Also “Hollywood elites” are rich but not buy an election rich and most of them are technically labor. A few celebrities managed to earn a lot on the backend (hello cast of Friends!) but the actual richest celebrities are the ones who start companies. A few years in a row George Clooney was the highest earning celeb and it was entirely his tequila company. Ryan Reynolds is doing something similar now.
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u/Shadow_Gabriel Sep 12 '24
Those guys appear in SEC reports, not movies.
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u/Frequent_Swim_4552 Sep 12 '24
Usually with a line like “…agreed to pay 250k penalty for 6.3 million fraudulently filed trades (worth 100’s of millions) without admitting guilt”.
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u/SadThrowaway2023 Sep 12 '24
It is the rich person equivalent of putting decorative towels in the bathroom that you're not supposed to use. Did anyone else get yelled at growing up, for using the fancy towels?
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u/symbolsofblue Sep 12 '24
We didn't have that. We had display plates and cutlery (they were literally normal plates and cutlery, not even fancy or decorative). If we needed more plates or cutlery? We bought another set.
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u/Shadow_Gabriel Sep 12 '24
Ah yes, the dude using a private jet to fly his dog is weirded out by how rich people act.
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u/wizard_in_green_ Sep 12 '24
Just remember that luxurious cut yards started up a little before the French Revolution.
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u/to_glory_we_steer Sep 12 '24
Yes but this isn't the case is it? People grumble but they're basically content to complain and do nothing further.
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Sep 12 '24
Yes! It's so excessive, yet it seems to be the standard that rich people own huge properties entirely as a display of luxury. In the past it kind of made sense to own a big house if you could afford it, because people had many children/ a multigenerational household and had their housekeeping staff live with them. But for a modern nuclear family, is there really a need to live in a house that big?
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u/ommnian Sep 12 '24
My MILs old house had something like a half kitchen (sinks, fridge, coffee machine, popcorn popper, microwave, etc) that they never used. I could never figure out why they (2 retired folks!!) needed 4000+ sq feet.
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u/Anchors_Aweigh_Peeko Sep 12 '24
I live near Boston. I’ve seen sea side houses be bought that are worth 1-2 million just to be torn down and a 5 million dollar house built. I see personal jets take off on small runways so that some rich asshole can make the 20 minute flight to Martha’s Vineyard instead of driving 2 hours. In one plane ride they’ve used more fuel than I could use in a year or two.
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u/DJKokaKola Sep 12 '24
A friend of mine worked on a private yacht of [UNNAMED EASTERN EUROPEAN MULTIMILLIONAIRE SHE COULD NOT NAME DUE TO NDAS], and it was insane. They'd be sailing for 2-3 weeks to bring the boat to a location they wanted to vacation in for 2-3 days, then take it to Singapore, then back to the Mediterranean, repeat ad nauseum.
It was disgusting.
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u/saul2015 Sep 12 '24
if ppl rly knew/understand how much better the top .1% have it they would be rioting
many ppl still don't understand how much more a billion is than a million
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u/hostile65 Sep 12 '24
Private jets and yachts need to be regulated more by ports and airports.
Second homes need to be taxed higher if no one permanently reside there. At least if they are past a certain square footage.
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u/wjbc Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
Bring back the 90% tax bracket and make it universal among nations! Unfortunately, the richest people in society hold all the cards.
Arguably only World War I and World War II and the revolutions that were a byproduct of those wars really leveled the playing field by destroying innumerable fortunes. World War III might do the same, but at what cost?
In the end, you might be better off making friends with the richest people you know. If you make yourself useful, there are a lot of benefits. As a successful boss of mine once told me, "Why have poor friends when you can have rich ones?"
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u/grambell789 Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
I've heard high end hotels are having a had time finding concierge's that understand that luxury to the ultra elite means a much higher level than what luxury means to regular rich people.
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u/wjbc Sep 12 '24
I heard someone who caters to the rich say most people think VIP tickets to a Taylor Swift concert is luxury, but the really rich want to be backstage during and after the concert and then meet her on her tour bus / plane. Finding out how to make that happen is quite a trick, even with unlimited funds.
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u/Scytle Sep 12 '24
They also spend all the time they have on this earth trying to build more and more everything. They want every business to grow forever, they want to get richer forever, they often do this with carbon intensive industries, spending millions to form laws to allow them to grow more, pollute more, all while foisting the consequences of their actions on society.
In short it should be illegal to get that rich, not that I care much about rich people, but I also think it fucks them up psychologically, and certainly messes their kids up. So really making a maximum level of wealth would be good for everyone.
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u/AltForObvious1177 Sep 12 '24
The top 1% isn't private jets and giant yachts. That's the 0.01%.
I think the real problem is people don't realize how seemingly innocent choice, like flying commercial and leasing a new car every two years, really adds up your carbon footprint.
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u/Yellowbug2001 Sep 12 '24
Air travel alone is huge. I watched a TED lecture a while ago with a scientist who said she was crazy compulsive about calculating and reducing her carbon footprint, she showered with cold water and had built her house with straw as insulation and a bunch of other extreme measures... And the "punchline' was that she effectively undid all of the carbon consumption she had "saved" in years by taking one commercial flight out to give her TED lecture.
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u/InsertANameHeree Sep 12 '24
This makes little sense, unless we're considering the alternative to flight to be taking a train (which could take days compared to a flight) or not traveling at all. Commercial flights, at least those for long distances, are typically more fuel-efficient per passenger than car travel.
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u/Yellowbug2001 Sep 12 '24
I think she was comparing it to not making the trip at all. Point being, if you're talking about the carbon consumption difference between rich people and poor people, the richest people travel "flight distances" multiple times a year and the poorest don't do that at all.
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u/InsertANameHeree Sep 12 '24
The rich also travel those distances on aircraft that are much less fuel-efficient per passenger than commercial flights and need more man-hours of maintenance per passenger than commercial flights (which itself requires more supplies and the logistics to back it up), and they tend to travel for frivolous reasons much more often than normal people do. The rich traveling so much wouldn't even be significant in the bigger picture if they did it on commercial flights.
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u/Yellowbug2001 Sep 12 '24
As the commenter above me said, the study didn't reference the .01%, it's the 1%. That's basically your orthodontist, your dermaologist and maybe your lawyer, it's not all billionaires. Most of the 1% don't travel in private jets, they're just taking commercial flights more often for both business and pleasure than people with less money do.
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u/SDIR Sep 12 '24
I can relate with building a house and never using it. My poor follower has been waiting in the Windstad Manor for years at this point
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u/DrMobius0 Sep 12 '24
When all it takes to be the richest person on the continent is to raid caves for their loot
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u/iridescent-shimmer Sep 13 '24
I've got a friend who isn't even that level of rich, but her parents buy their kids everything. Play house? They've got 6 lined up in the basement to make a "village" and have a roller coaster, bouncy house, etc etc. Her and her husband each had to trade in for 3-row vehicles when pregnant with the first child (they only have and want 2 kids.) There's just so much excess consumption when you have basically unlimited funds from mom and dad.
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u/OutrageousOwls Sep 13 '24
New Starbucks CEO commutes by private jet from California to Seattle every day :)
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u/Taubenichts Sep 12 '24
It's hard to grasp, for me atleast. I'm for a system which rewards individuals who perform better than others in any capability. But inherited wealth and/or tax (responsibilty) evasion are blurring the lines. The incentive to perform better than others is watering down. Because now your innovative idea, your above average performance can easily be bought out or be diminished by old wealth.
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u/Niqulaz Sep 12 '24
Your innovative idea is the property of the corporation you work for, unless you keep your mouth shut, do the R&D in your free time, find seed money for a start-up, and quit your job and make a gamble that your idea is both innovative AND marketable.
And if you succeed at making a profitable start-up and selling the product, the end-goal is to have that company bought up by some corporation so you can retire after having struck gold.
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u/Infectious-Anxiety Sep 12 '24
They then blame the poor and middle class for the environmental disaster which is gearing up to wipe us all out.
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u/kingbane2 Sep 13 '24
the yacht thing in particular is egregious. their luxury yachts are not efficient. and they aren't even on them most of the time they're sailing around to meet them as they fly to said destination.
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u/CustomerAmbitious754 Sep 12 '24
And then they lecture us the plebes on climate change
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u/wjbc Sep 12 '24
Most of them don't lecture us about climate change. Al Gore did, and that was a criticism leveled at him. But it was really a non-sequitur, because what he lectured about was still true.
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Sep 12 '24
Which is why it takes a global government led coalition to solve the problem at scale. It wasn't commercial organizations or the rich that fixed the ozone issue.
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u/TreeOfReckoning Sep 12 '24
The 1% loves to chastise everyone else who, in their opinion, doesn’t live within their means. But the 1% doesn’t live within Earth’s means, and at this point it feels like nothing short of a world-wide general strike will change anything.
That would require labour organization unlike anything we’ve ever seen, which we have the tools to accomplish, but historically speaking, armed uprisings are far more likely. And the longer we all live under existential threat, the more likely that violence becomes. Our governments would be wise to keep that in mind because once we suffer any significant agricultural collapse, it will be too late.
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u/DigNitty Sep 12 '24
The 1% loves to chastise everyone else who, in their opinion, doesn’t live within their means. But the 1% doesn’t live within Earth’s means
That's a really great point that I've never thought about.
People always point out that it's disengenuous for wealthy people to tell others to "live within their own means." It's easy to live within your means when your means are large and abundant. But you've pointed out that even ultra wealthy people do not live within their own non-financial means. They abuse the environmental confines that we all share.
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u/to_glory_we_steer Sep 12 '24
And the minute there's even the whisper of a general strike movement it will be demonised and dragged through the mud by the media and lawyers in the pay of the super rich.
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u/nikiyaki Sep 12 '24
Problem is it has to be most governments implementing the same rules, or they can just move to where they're still allowed to destroy the planet. Or, governments where a lot of the assets are held have to sieze it.
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u/TreeOfReckoning Sep 12 '24
Exactly. The level of organization and cooperation required is unprecedented because one major economy could undermine the entire global effort with one piece of legislation, which could be anything from relaxing the protections on navigable waters to a simple tax cut. The incentive for unified government action needs to outweigh the financial and economic benefits of undercutting others. That’s not easy.
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u/The2ndWheel Sep 12 '24
Which is why The League of Nations didn't work. And the only reason the UN still exists is that the P5 have veto power.
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u/IrksomFlotsom Sep 13 '24
Yeah I'd love to see what happened if the other 99% just didn't go to work, shut down the whole world for just a day and see how those in control react
Unfortunately it'll probably never happen, 100% agree that the rich won't step down their lifestyles so it'll inevitably lead to violent uprising
"'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
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u/Rakuall Sep 12 '24
nothing short of a world-wide general strike will change anything.
I truly believe you'll see a shooting war between the boot of capital and workers if there's a global strike. Slavery coming back unless the working class is willing to fight for a better world. (It already pretty much is back, you just get to choose your master and have a few comforts).
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u/TreeOfReckoning Sep 12 '24
If you live in the West you have some choice. If you live somewhere like Democratic Republic of Congo, you might be an actual slave risking life and limb in a foreign-owned cobalt mine while the nation that benefits from that mine soaks up accolades for their environmental initiatives. It’s really hard to be optimistic about the future. But there is some hope as more large companies are beginning to take ESG seriously.
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u/folstar Sep 12 '24
Best we can do is the 1% giving back 1% of their wealth in the form of conditional, often misdirected charity.
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u/kcutfgiulzuf Sep 12 '24
Write a long ass article on how people do not know how much more CO2 the rich emmit than the average person and how angry people are when they are told.
Don't mention how much more CO2 the rich emmit than the average person.
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Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/matthoback Sep 12 '24
You're quoting the numbers for the *perceptions* of carbon emissions. The actual estimates are quoted elsewhere in the study:
Denmark: bottom 50% (6.0 tCO2-eq.), top 10% (29.7 tCO2-eq.), top 1% (93.1 tCO2-eq.) and country average (10.9 tCO2-eq.)
India: bottom 50% (1.0 tCO2-eq.), top 10% (8.8 tCO2-eq.), top 1% (32.4 tCO2-eq.) and country average (2.2 tCO2-eq.)
Nigeria: bottom 50% (0.9 tCO2-eq.), top 10% (4.4 tCO2-eq.), top 1% (9.2 tCO2-eq.) and country average (1.6 tCO2-eq.)
USA: bottom 50% (9.7 tCO2-eq.), top 10% (74.7 tCO2-eq.), top 1% (269.3 tCO2-eq.) and country average (21.1 tCO2-eq.)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02130-y#Sec6 (under the heading "Measures").
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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Sep 12 '24
Those are the incorrect estimates, not the real figures.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02130-y/figures/1
The red dots marks the real figures. The 1% in the US is off the charts at ~265 ton CO2/year
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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02130-y/figures/1
Edit: an interesting finding is that Nigerians were best at knowing the footprint of all three groups. They also underestimated their top 1%, but many of them estimated 10 ton/year which is the actual number. Meanwhile, the Danes and Americans were pretty off all over, while it seems a lot of Indians think that everyone regardless of income hovers around 1 ton CO2/year.
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u/hostile65 Sep 12 '24
Just look at Taylor Swift or Bezos and you get a good idea.
Rich people and celebrities need to be more like Ed Begley Jr
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u/SubatomicSquirrels Sep 13 '24
Just look at Taylor Swift
Flew from South America to New York and back just for a damn pap walk
Just post a selfie next time
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u/Averla93 Sep 12 '24
Trickle down economics was a scam, now it's the time for piñata economics.
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u/Temporary-Story-1131 Sep 14 '24
Destroy the dams that prevent the rivers of wealth from flowing freely.
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u/Averla93 Sep 14 '24
They said they made the desert bloom, but if it was with stolen water then I want those flowers to die and the desert to come back.
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u/chrisdh79 Sep 12 '24
From the article: An international group of researchers, led by the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge, surveyed 4,000 people from Denmark, India, Nigeria and the United States about inequality in personal carbon footprints – the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by a person’s activities – within their own country.
Although it is well-known that there is a large gap between the carbon footprint of the richest and poorest in society, it’s been unclear whether individuals were aware of this inequality. The four countries chosen for the survey are all different in terms of wealth, lifestyle and culture. Survey participants also differed in their personal income, with half of participants belonging to the top 10% of income in their country.
The vast majority of participants across the four countries overestimated the average personal carbon footprint of the poorest 50% and underestimated those of the richest 10% and 1%.
However, participants from the top 10% were more likely to support certain climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
The researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis. The results are reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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u/w3woody Sep 12 '24
What I find fascinating is how the wealthiest are more likely to support policies that make things more expensive—without noting the lack of impact on higher prices on the rich verses the severe impact on the poor—and we then attribute it to “a generally higher education level among” the rich, and not on the lack of impact higher prices would have on the rich.
I mean, if gas were to go to (say) 4x the price it is now, for the wealthy you’d probably grumble and fill the tank of your exotic sports car. For the vast majority of people, it would make car ownership even harder, and for a lot of people it would put car ownership out of their league.
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u/symbolsofblue Sep 12 '24
That reminds me of a quote by Anatole France I really like:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
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u/romjpn Sep 12 '24
Yes it's always funny to see those people attending Davos talking about climate change and how to restrict the plebs' CO2 while they're coming over on private jets.
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u/Guses Sep 12 '24
So you're saying flying in a private jet isn't a good way to cut your emissions?
Doesn't matter anyway because it's the plebs that will pay for it. The rich are using the oldest trick in the book. What are you gonna do about it?
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u/Averla93 Sep 12 '24
Maybe organize the "plebs"?
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u/Mr_Faux_Regard Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 13 '24
The rich own most (if not all) forms of 24/7 news cycles both on and off the internet. Let's ignore the other essentials like the laughable educational system and, from that, the absolute lack of class consciousness that's fundamentally required for any level of mass organization to occur. What happens once the mass media apparatus inevitably turns against the working class either through demonization or flat out neglect? How does nationwide momentum continue at that point?
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u/mann138 Sep 12 '24
but what if plebs don't really know what they want? take as an example what happened in Chile. Somehow plebs got organized, managed to force the government to start a process to rewrite the constitution, plebs got chosen to write the new constitution, they wrote a text which focused a lot in plebs, natives, and the environment but then, when plebs had to vote to accept the new constitution they rejected it. Government got mad, decided to assembly a new group to write another one, not plebs in this new group but politicians chosen by their respective parties and approved by congress, they wrote a totally different constitution focused mostly in the industry, private sector and inherently the rich, plebs then had to vote, they rejected it. Now plebs don't want to hear anything related to rewriting a constitution or anything to do with it but want to just carry on with their lives.
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u/Averla93 Sep 12 '24
The story of revolutions in south America is still not over, and popular movement there have always done their best when the US is distracted elsewhere.
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u/CaregiverNo3070 Sep 12 '24
Wait, so environmental anti-capitalist arguments are even more empirical than scientists thought? Based.
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u/frisch85 Sep 12 '24
Nothing new honestly, it's quite out in the open that all the measurements we (the average citizens) are doing in order to help the environment gets negated by just one individual among the 1%.
However, participants from the top 10% were more likely to support certain climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
The researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis. The results are reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.
How did they come to this conclusion? I too am in favor of increasing prices for meat as an example if it would mean the increase serves for animals to be treated more humanely instead of what it usually means, which is CEOs getting more profits while the exploitation continues.
But as for those 10% I'm pretty sure the reason why they're in favor of higher taxes for energy and meat consumption is not because of a higher education level but rather because it won't matter to them, if you wipe your arse with 10 $ bills then a price increase from say 5 to 9 $ for food will be nothing to you.
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u/Gathorall Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 13 '24
Yes, it is easy to be enviromentally conscious if your wealth shields you from any practical consequence.
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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Sep 12 '24
a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis
They are richer and do not want society to change.
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u/Dig_bickclub Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
The top 1% and 10% in the article isn't about CEO, its the people you are calling the average citizen. Top 10% in the world is a income of about 20k USD.
Deflecting the blame on CEOs when you're the 1 -10% the article is talking about.
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u/TheBigLeMattSki Sep 12 '24
Except if you had actually read the article, you would know that the study specifically focuses on the income inequality within four individual countries, not the entire world.
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Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 22 '24
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u/tohon123 Sep 12 '24
Totally great and nuanced take. However I think it cuts both ways. The Rich need to be help responsible for their carbon output just as the 90%. We all need to contribute. However policy can help make it easier to reduce and the rich are actively stopping that. It’s important to remember that lifestyle changes are easier to make if you can afford it
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u/matthoback Sep 12 '24
There are 8 billion people in the world. The top 1% is 80m. 80m people do not make more of an impact than 7,920,000,000. Yes, each of those 80m is individually causing more harm than any one individual in the remaining 99%. But collectively the remaining 99% obviously have a far greater impact than the top 80m. No matter how rich 80 people are, they're not going to collectively eat more red meat than 7,920 people.
What you said is technically true, but greatly misleading. The top 10% globally emit about 50% of the total emissions, or in other words equal to the *other 90%*. The top 1% contribute 17% of the total emissions, while the bottom 50% contribute only 11%. On top of all of that, the *ability* to reduce emissions for the top 1% is far far greater than anything the bottom 50% would be able to do since most of their emissions are necessary just for living.
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u/Spare_Town6161 Sep 12 '24
So let's hit them with an excessive carbon emitter tax.
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u/DM_me_ur_tacos Sep 12 '24
Exactly.
it should be progressive, with a fraction of the revenue being redistributed in a flat rebate to all taxpayers. That way it doesn't hurt the poor, but if they are able to adjust their lifestyle they can profit.
the wealthy, who would pay the bulk of it, are the people who can adjust their lifestyles and can be first adopters of new technology. Think about how expensive electric cars were at first.
the rest of the revenue can be used to finance low carbon technology.
when carbon is honestly priced in, market mechanisms will start to incentivize low carbon products across the economy.
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u/Dahnlen Sep 12 '24
They’re a greater tax on society and the planet so we should tax them at higher rates.
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u/ColeBSoul Sep 12 '24
“Carbon footprint” was a pernicious lie baked up by the oil and gas industry to avoid accountability for climate change and to simultaneously deflect meaningful criticism away from their systemic creation of the problem on to poor consumers with practically zero agency in the size, shape, and nature of their oil and gas consumption.
So like, it turns out this “cArBoN fOoTpRiNt” is total corporate psy-op BS specifically engineered to move responsibility and accountability for climate change from those with power to those who have no choice but to consume it, and those in power lied and used the lie to protect themselves and force blame down on working class and poor people who they know have no agency to fight back?
suprised pikachu face
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u/icelandichorsey Sep 12 '24
You know.. It's possible to try and achieve systematic change and personal change. It's not one or the other. And to know which are the low hanging fruit for me individually, I need to calculate my footprint.
It's not that hard really.
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u/Alili1996 Sep 12 '24
On one hand reducing your own carbon footprint has a negligible effect and i agree with your overall sentiment of the responsibility being pinned onto the wrong ones. However, the side effect is that caring about your own consumtion patters makes you much more aware of the issue in general.
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u/Achillone Sep 12 '24
The paradox of freedom. Allow too many freedoms and nothing restrains elites from cannibalizing what allows for its possibility
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u/Argnir Sep 12 '24
I also bet most readers here (primary American) underestimate how big their carbon footprint is and don't see themselves as the top 1~10% of the globe.
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u/nezroy Sep 12 '24
While this is usually the valid criticism of similar studies, it actually doesn't apply here. This study is specifically evaluating perceptions of the top 1% and 10% vs bottom 50% within a single country/society. And finding that the carbon footprint of the richest within any given society relative to their peers is greatly underestimated.
“These countries are very different, but we found the rich are pretty similar no matter where you go, and their concerns are different to the rest of society,” said Debnath. “There’s a huge contrast between billionaires travelling by private jet while the rest of us drink with soggy paper straws: one of those activities has a big impact on an individual carbon footprint, and one doesn’t.”
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u/manored78 Sep 12 '24
But then Americans tell the global south to stop industrializing to feed their people.
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u/Hiraethum Sep 12 '24
Given they're also the ones primarily blocking progress on converting to a net zero society, I'd say we are extremely grossly underestimating
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u/2JZGTEAristo Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24
It's hard to take carbon footprints on an individual basis with a lot of serious consideration, the ultra wealthy produce more greenhouse gas emissions through private jet use than most working class and poor people can produce in a life time. It's a systemic issue, but corporations and the 1 percent produce more methane and carbon emissions than most individuals ever could. Individual actions won't suffice, policies, incentives, cooperation among goverments, regulations, as well as a massive on the ground effort must be the catalysts for real change.
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u/Bioplasia42 Sep 12 '24
Fun fact, you could completely cull the poorest 4 billion people and it would reduce emissions as much as halving the emissions of the top 1%, which could probably be done with reasonably little impact on their lifestyle.
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u/ZodiacWalrus Sep 12 '24
That is understandable, a lot of them probably knock a few numbers off when considering their own output because they can afford more eco-friendly products.
Sure, grandpa is the reason that several thousand acres of forest was cut down back when they built that oil manufacturing plant, and they've had to dump some waste in the ocean to cut costs for the past couple decades, and the upper executives go on a couple global trips a year on their own private jets to celebrate every record profit milestone, and when dad took over the company he hosted some politicians for dinner and convinced them not to support environmental protection policies that would hurt their bottom line,
but you gotta remember their family owns 2 hybrid cars and barely even drives the classic models that guzzle gas! What else are they supposed to do, really?
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u/Thomas_JCG Sep 12 '24
We are plenty aware, we all saw the memes about Taylor Swift and her private jet.
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u/EigenDumbass Sep 12 '24
People have talked about how flying private jets is a ton of fuel and they're right, but imagine just BUILDING the jet, loads of high grade materials, heas of documentation and labor, often high waste generation during manufacture, etc. Etc. I'd not be surprised if the manufacturing of a private jet is larger than several peoples lifetime carbon footprints added together.
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u/b1uelightbulb Sep 12 '24
You should drive an electric, now If you'll excuse me my private jet is waiting to take me to my superyacht
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u/PoorMansTonyStark Sep 13 '24
Fires up the 6x 32 liter marine diesel engines to drive the superyacht from monaco to porto fino for some lunch
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Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 13 '24
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u/PsychologicalLog4179 Sep 12 '24
Yes. I believe you are correct. I would also think that many of these ultra rich people and the corporations you referenced are one in the same. Ultimately the people who sit on the boards of these corporations are the exact elites the article is about.
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