The planet’s richest people emit so much carbon through their lifestyle and investment choices they are fuelling economic losses and climate change-related deaths all over the world, charity Oxfam International has found in a new study.
By using luxury transport like private jets and super yachts, and consistently choosing to invest in carbon-intensive industries, 50 of the world’s top billionaires emit more carbon in just 90 minutes than the the average person does in their entire lifetime, the study said.
Those choices have, historically, played – and still play – an outsized role in fuelling climate change-related losses and deaths in the Global South, especially in Asia and Africa, the study said.
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“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit,” Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar said in a press release.
According to Oxfam’s calculations, the private jets of 23 out of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires emitted 2,074 tonnes of carbon a year. It would take an average person 300 years to produce that much carbon, it said.
Private jet-related emissions from the super rich have been put under the microscope in recent months, after pop star Taylor Swift’s carbon footprint came under scrutiny early this year. Swift is believed to emit between 8,000-10,000 tonnes of CO2 annually on the back of her frequent use of private jets.
Most recently, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol also made headlines after the coffee chain gave him a private jet to fly to his office more than 1,600 kilometres away, at least three times a week. That commute would result in at least 1,000 tons of carbon emissions annually by some measures.
Meanwhile, emissions from superyachts of 18 of the 50 super-rich individuals considered in the study were even more outsized, producing 5,672 tonnes of carbon dioxide. It would take an average person 860 years to to match that carbon footprint, the Oxfam study found.
Among some of the billionaires mentioned in the study were electric vehicle-maker Tesla’s boss Elon Musk and Amazon chief Jeff Bezos — the top two richest people in the world right now.
Elon Musk owns at least two private jets, and together they produce 5,497 tonnes of CO2 per year, the study found. Meanwhile, two jets owned by Jeff Bezos collectively spent almost 25 days in the air, emitting 2,908 tonnes of CO2, it added.
Betting against the planet
Despite those mammoth numbers, emissions from billionaires’ luxury transport are dwarfed by those from their investments, according to the study.
The average investment emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires were around 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, it said. That is around 340 times their emissions from private jets and super-yachts combined, it added.
Furthermore, each billionaire’s investment emissions are equivalent to almost 400,000 years of consumption emissions by an average person in the world, it said.
Those emissions stem from billionaires’ investments in carbon-intensive sectors such as oil, mining, shipping and cement and high polluting industries such as fashion, finance and technology. Worse still, only one billionaire out of those assessed by the study has significant investments in renewable energy — Indian tycoon Gautam Adani.
And most of Adani’s billions have come from an empire built on dirty fossil fuels. Adani Group is the largest private developer of coal in the world, according to think tank Climate Energy Finance.
‘Burning through the carbon budget’
The collective emissions from choices made by the super rich are quickly depleting the world’s carbon budget, Oxfam said. Carbon budget means the amount of carbon dioxide that the world can still emit without overshooting the 1.5C threshold.
According the the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s remaining carbon budget in 2021 was between 500 and 400 billion tonnes of CO2. Researchers warn it will run out by January 2029 at the current pace of emissions.
“If everyone began emitting as much carbon as those in the top 10%, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in less than a year and a half,” the study said.
And, if every person in the world emitted carbon at the same rate as the 50 richest billionaires, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in two days.
Driving losses worth trillions
The study’s most glaring findings, meanwhile, were on the “lethal” impact of these choices by the super rich on the world’s poorest and middle-income people.
Consumption emissions of the world’s richest 10% have already caused global economic output to fall by $8.6 trillion between 1990 and 2023, Oxfam found. By 2050, these losses will expand to $150 trillion, it added.
Investment emissions alone from the top 50 billionaires will cause $250 billion worth of economic damage by 2050, it added.
The overall emissions from the super rich will only worsen global inequality, Oxfam noted. Low- and lower-middle-income countries will face economic losses of at least $44 trillion by 2050.
Southern Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will lose 3.0%, 2.4% and 2.4%, respectively, of their cumulative GDP by 2050, Oxfam said.
Meanwhile, high-income countries — essentially the Global North — will only continue to benefit economically, with economic gains of $5.8 trillion.
“This illustrates a shocking injustice: countries with a large share of the world’s super-rich 1% are made yet richer, while countries with a large share of the world’s poorest 50%, who have done little to contribute to the climate crisis, are made yet poorer,” the study noted.
Taking lives
Aside from causing economic losses, emissions from the super-rich will also taking a toll on the lives of people most vulnerable to climate change, Oxfam found.
Rising temperatures have led to a surge in extreme heat events, driving deaths from deadly illnesses such as heatstrokes and unprecedented rainfall and related disasters.
That means just four years (2015–2019) of the consumption emissions of the world’s richest 10% are enough to cause 4.8 million excess deaths between 2020 and 2120, Oxfam found.
Had the world’s super-rich 1% halved their emissions in that period, 756,000 lives could have been saved, it said.
It also noted that India would see the most number of excess deaths, due to “horrific consequences” of higher temperatures.
Around 430,000 Indian citizens will die between 2020 and 2120 because of just four years (2015–2019) of emissions by the world’s super-rich 1%, the Oxfam study said.
Those most at risk are women and low-income communities that often have lack proper ventilation or cooling systems.
The effects of excess heat can be lethal for people living in slums — such as the Dharavi area in Mumbai. Dharavi — considered one of the world’s largest slums — houses nearly a million people just 2.39 square kilometres.
The resulting conditions lead the slum area to heat up as much as 5 degrees more than neighbouring areas that are home to middle-class residents.
‘Make the rich pay’
The Oxford study concluded that global governments needed to make decisive moves to curb emissions from the super-rich, while taxing the wealth they built by harming the planet.
“We cannot avert total climate breakdown unless the world’s richest individuals are required to make dramatic and immediate reductions in emissions,” the study said.
It called for permanent, high taxes on the super-rich, along with punitive taxes on carbon-intensive consumptions such as private jets, super-yachts, sports utility vehicles (SUVs), and frequent air travel.
The study also noted that the majority of the richest 1% and 10% of people in the world live in countries with high historical emissions.
The rich people living in these countries have benefitted from the economic growth that these emissions enabled, and they also have the resources to protect themselves from negative climate effects, it added.
That, coupled with past injustices, means the Global North owes the Global South a climate debt of $5 trillion between 2025 and 2050, the study said.
Low- and middle-income countries will need at least $18.9 trillion between now and 2030 for adequate climate action, it noted.
But despite rich nations’ “responsibility to compensate for their historic carbon emissions and ongoing neocolonial extractive practices… there is no indication that they will accept this responsibility,” it said.
- Vishakha Saxena
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