We need more taxes, everywhere, and most of all we need progressive – prohibitively expensive! – taxes on carbon usage. That is to say: if you’re poor and you need to heat your home or drive to work, that’s regrettable but you can’t help it so this doesn’t need to be punished by high taxes. If you fly by air plane and this is not a medical emergency out of a war zone or inaccessible mountain regions or something of a similar scale, those taxes should start making an impact. And if you’re super rich, you just need to stop fucking with the environment. Just stop it.
Other studies have also begun to look at microdata on the “carbon lives” of the very richest. One study examining the emissions of twenty of the world’s richest billionaires found that each produced on average eight thousand tons of carbon dioxide. For comparison, the average citizen in a rich country produces around six tons — and the amount needed to hit the 1.5 degree C global safety target is just over two tons per person. New analysis of the private jet flights of the superrich has also revealed that celebrities and billionaires emit more carbon in minutes than ordinary people do in a year. – The Rich Are the Ones Burning the Planet, by Max Lawson, for Jacobin
The Rich Are the Ones Burning the Planet, by Max Lawson, for Jacobin
This article is full of good information. Curbing the carbon rich lifestyle of the rich should be our top priority!
Since 1990, the richest 5 percent was responsible for over a third of the growth in total emissions. The top 1 percent was responsible for more than the whole of the bottom 50 percent.
Yes, we should all do what we can. But the rich, being rich, can do a whole lot more, and they should, even if they don’t want to. We need to agitate for the right issues so that people vote for the right parties so that the right laws get enacted to stop the burning.
It’s been well noted that people all over the world, when asked how unequal their countries are, consistently and massively underestimate the scale of the divide. And when asked for their preferred level of “fair inequality,” while this differs between societies, the majority consistently want their society to be a lot more equal than it actually is.
A recent study in Nature took these inequality preferences and combined them with the carbon emissions required for everyone on earth to have decent living standards. They found that if societies worldwide actually matched what their citizens felt was a level of “fair” inequality, it would be possible for all of humanity to have a decent living and stay within the energy limits to prevent 1.5 degrees of global heating.
This is why I vote for the melon green party in Switzerland: green on the outside, red on the inside. We need to drastically decrease inequality and save the planet at the same time.
#Economy #Climate