There is something to it though. I can’t remember where I saw this but in some western country they made an assessment of carbon emissions distributed on income quintiles (I think). The highest quintile emitted something like twice of what the lowest did. It makes sense, they have multiple cars instead of riding bicycles, they live in big houses instead of small apartments, if something breaks they throw it out instead of trying to repair it.
So while the ultra-rich might be too few for their overconsumption to have an impact (besides the moral one which one should also consider), cutting the luxury spending of the well-off and above is a low-hanging fruit that could get us part of the way without causing anyone any hardship.
i thought it was much more extreme than that, with the upper quintile being responsible for something like 50% of all emissions
and then you have to figure how much labor goes into supporting those lifestyles, directly and indirectly. restructuring the economy to not be in service of billionaires would do quite a lot to reduce western “consumption” habits probably while improving most people’s actual quality of life, i think.
There is something to it though. I can’t remember where I saw this but in some western country they made an assessment of carbon emissions distributed on income quintiles (I think). The highest quintile emitted something like twice of what the lowest did. It makes sense, they have multiple cars instead of riding bicycles, they live in big houses instead of small apartments, if something breaks they throw it out instead of trying to repair it.
So while the ultra-rich might be too few for their overconsumption to have an impact (besides the moral one which one should also consider), cutting the luxury spending of the well-off and above is a low-hanging fruit that could get us part of the way without causing anyone any hardship.
i thought it was much more extreme than that, with the upper quintile being responsible for something like 50% of all emissions
and then you have to figure how much labor goes into supporting those lifestyles, directly and indirectly. restructuring the economy to not be in service of billionaires would do quite a lot to reduce western “consumption” habits probably while improving most people’s actual quality of life, i think.