cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21822936
“If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990,”
The study assesses the contribution of the highest emitting groups within societies and finds that the top 1% of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average to increases in monthly 1-in-100-year heat extremes globally and 17 times more to Amazon droughts.
The research sheds new light on the links between income-based emissions inequality and climate injustice, illustrating how the consumption and investments of wealthy individuals have had disproportionate impacts on extreme weather events
Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth,"
No. It’s not 2/3 of climate change caused by wealthy bastards, it’s 100%.
Non-wealthy people don’t own factories spewing heat and trash into the air. Non-wealthy people might own cars, but they don’t design and build those cars to constantly spew dangerous & deadly emissions — wealthy people are responsible for that, and for the lack of a healthier, greener choice for transportation. It’s wealthy bastards who’ve fought against regulations reducing pollution, wealthy bastards who oppose public transit, and wealthy bastards who profit from the climate change that’ll eventually kill the rest of us.
Fuck if I’m causing 1/3 of climate change. Fuck, no.
Wealthy bastards make sure environmental protection is a punchline, and wrap everything in plastic like Laura Palmer. The rich are at the heart of every vile thing that’s being done to the planet. Virtually all of man-made climate change is caused by rich bastards.
If you choose to eat meat, you’re causing loads of climate damage.
Lots of non wealthy people are responsible for a non-zero amount of damage.
You can’t really blame individuals for society issues. If I drop dead tomorrow, the global emissions won’t change. Still the same amount of cows, still the same amount of cars on the road, still the same governments and policies.
Not saying we shouldn’t do anything as individuals, we definitely should, we can all do better. But you can’t blame any one random individual for any of these issues, imo(non multimillionaire, I mean). Feels so wrong.
If all the poor people drop dead tomorrow, the emissions will change. And the number of animals will decrease.
You do have an impact. It is no negligible.
It is not sufficient to cut the emissions of rich people to zero. It is necessary and the majority, but all of us need to stop putting GHG into the atmosphere
Right, but I’m not all the poor people. And I can’t control them either. Yes, if everyone stopped eating meat, we’d stop farming them and emissions would drop. But that’s unrealistic, never gonna happen. So yes, my impact in negligible.
And I’m not saying I won’t do anything because my impact is negligible. I still recycle and encourage others to do the same and so on. But realistically speaking, I’m nobody. What I do doesn’t change anything. At most I may have influenced 10 other people to be eco friendly. Still didn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things. But maybe once a few more million people do the same we’ll be ok. We’ll see.
That’s exactly what the coal company said about the oil company.
I do agree we need to tax meat and subsidize cheap proteins like beans, tvp, and seitan
No, this is what those companies said and did. Let’s not pretend they’re powerless, lol.
And let’s not pretend you’re powerless
Yeah, obviously you can’t blame one individual. Only a ton of individuals in aggregate. That’s why its important to change the behavior of large swathes of people.
Neither will global emissions change if jeff bezos drops dead tomorrow. The companies are all public and will still be led by a board of directors.
And the private jet flights and the monster boat are nothing?
And what about all the money he gave to Trump and to other politicians to influence policy decisions?
I’m gonna be honest - yes. Those things are nothing in the grand scheme.
You can’t put a number on these kind of things, so I’m not going to count that. Otherwise, everyone that is buying nestle products is exploiting third world countries.
The thing is, he’s got the power to influence the world for the better but he’s not doing it. “Part of the problem or part of the solution” applies to him at the very least a thousand fold.
Yes, true, but that doesn’t mean he’s overwhelmingly responsible for climate change.
No, not overwhelmingly. Partly. That’s what the article and a bunch of studies claim.
Totally bogus. The effect of one person eating a roast beef sandwich and side of chips is so nearly nothing it rounds to nothing. Saying, “If you choose to eat meat, you’re causing loads of climate damage,” is bald-faced misinformation.
The average person kills about 100 animals per year. If you sum up all if that for all the 90% of the population, thats very not negligible