Riccardo Liguori Private jets, yachts and polluting investments: Oxfam dispels any doubts with "Carbon Inequality Kills", a report that reveals unpublished data on the pollution produced by the super-rich and their impact on the future of the Planet
@Canva
A new study by Oxfam, “Carbon Inequality Kills”, shows that the world’s 50 richest billionaires emit, on average, in just 90 minutes, the same amount of CO2 as an average-income person generates in an entire lifetime.
Private jets, mega yachts, and investments in highly polluting industries are some of the main drivers of this unlivable ecological footprint, which accelerates the climate crisis while driving inequality, hunger, and death worldwide.
The climate cost of wealth: “carbon budget” at risk
The report, which came out this morning in advance of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, is blunt: if the world keeps emitting at current rates, our “carbon budget“-the amount of CO2 we can still emit without surpassing the critical 2.7°F (1.5°C) threshold for global warming will be entirely used up in just four years. If everyone polluted like the richest 1%, that budget would last less than five months.
“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it on fire for fun and profit”, said Amitabh Behar, CEO of Oxfam International. “The dirty investments and toys of luxury are not just a symbol of excess but an immediate threat to people and the planet.”
Oxfam’s study, the first into the combined luxuries of transportation and polluting investments of billionaires, reveals telling data: the average number of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires took flights totaling 184 in a single year, spending 425 hours in the air. The amount of flying alone produces the same carbon emissions an average-income person would in 300 years.
Meanwhile, their yachts emitted as much carbon as a typical person would over 860 years. Jeff Bezos‘ two private jets clocked up nearly 25 days in the skies in one year, spewing out enough carbon to match an average Amazon US employee’s emissions over 207 years. Mexican Carlos Slim‘s private jets completed 92 redundant trips to circle the globe five times. It recently emerged that the Walton family-heirs to Walmart-own three superyachts producing, in one year, as much carbon as 1,714 Walmart store employees.
Billionaire investments: the hidden threat
But more worrying still is the role of billionaire investments. The average emissions of their investments are roughly 340 times higher than those from private jets and yachts combined.
Almost 40% of those investments are linked to high-emission industries: oil, mining, shipping, and cement. For comparison, an average billionaire’s portfolio is almost twice as polluting as an investment made in the S&P 500. The result of this economic model is untenable and, importantly, disproportionately impacts the world’s poorer nations: since 1990, it is estimated that the richest 1% of the global population-a group including all billionaires-caused a loss of $2.9 trillion in economic output globally due to its emissions.
This burden is falling heavily on low and lower-middle-income countries, suffering great losses in GDP. Emissions by the richest 1% of the global population have caused crop losses that could feed millions. This figure is projected to rise over future decades, particularly among the hardest-hit regions of Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2120, 78% of heat-related deaths will happen in low and lower-middle-income countries.
Oxfam’s call to action: make the rich pay
In the lead-up to COP29, Oxfam is calling on governments to reduce emissions by the richest through the taxation of income and wealth of the top 1%, banning or taxing high-carbon luxury consumption, and controlling companies to bring down emissions. Oxfam wants a wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires and on investments in polluting industries levied on the world’s wealthy polluters. They call for reimagining economies in a way that advances much more equitable income distribution, rather than basing their design on accumulation of wealth by the few.
