this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

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World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, says Oxfam (2015) (slrpnk.net)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-richest-10-produce-half-of-global-carbon-emissions-says-oxfam

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but given what I know a small bit about planetary poverty, if you're reading this from a place with heaTing or air conditioning, on your own personal smart device or computer, you aren't in that bottom 50%.

If I remember right, even with my problems I'm not even in the bottom 60%. Some places make in a month what I make in a day, when I have work.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Rating wealth by income (which this study does) is unusual and difficult. I don’t actually see any income numbers attached to their analysis which is suspicious.

Anyway, anyone with a net worth of around 90k USD is in that top 10%. Median net worth in the US was 127k in 2019. Which means that more than half of the 350M people in this country are in the worlds richest 10% (by wealth)

Picking a random American off the street gives you better than coin toss odds of finding a person in the “mega polluter” group you see in the thumbnail graph.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Even doing everything you can to "reduce carbon footprints" it's still going to be orders of magnitude larger than a small village farmer in the middle of Nepal.

Doesnt mean it's not worth doing, it just means there's a lot more to be done.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Still though, if you're gonna split up that top 10% into 10 more parts, you will probably once again find that the top 1% is responsible for most of the emissions that the top 10% is responsible for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Guaranteed if you own a house in the US you're part of the world's top 10% in terms of wealth.

That doesn't translate directly to emissions, though, because the vast majority of emissions are industry and travel, so what you buy and how you live are much greater factors than heating and cooling. Go vegan and you instantly drop out of that "contribute to 50% of lifestyle emissions" zone.