Air travel, big houses and significantly more consumption – according to a study by the organization Oxfam, wealthy people contribute disproportionately to global warming. In Germany they consume 15 times as much CO2 as poorer people.
How climate-damaging a person lives obviously has a lot to do with their personal income and assets. According to an analysis by the development organization Oxfam, in 2019 the richest percent of the world’s population caused as many climate-damaging greenhouse gases as the five billion people who make up the poorer two-thirds. This is shown by the report “Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99 Percent” that has now been presented.
Oxfam presented the study ahead of the UN World Climate Change Conference COP28, which begins on November 30 in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. In Germany, the richest percent of residents caused a total of 83.3 tons of CO2 emissions per capita per year in 2019. That is more than 15 times as much as the poorer half of the German population, who consumed 5.4 tons of CO2 per capita per year.
Cause is more more harmful to the climate consumption
“Through their extreme consumption, the rich and super-rich are fueling the climate crisis, which is threatening the livelihoods of billions of people with heat waves, droughts and floods, especially in the low-income countries of the Global South,” said Oxfam’s social inequality officer, Manuel Schmitt. Extreme wealth is a key driving force for the climate crisis.
Data basis
For the report, Oxfam, together with the Stockholm Environment Institute, analyzed consumption-related greenhouse gas emissions by income class for 2019 and the period 1990 to 2019. The research is based on figures from the Stockholm Environment Institute, which relies on data from the Global Carbon Atlas, the World Inequality Database, supported by Penn World Tables on Income (PWT) and World Bank figures.
According to the report, richer people behave in a significantly more climate-damaging manner in their consumption – for example through more frequent air travel, larger houses and, in extreme cases, luxury villas, mega yachts and private jets.
In 2019, the richest percent of the world’s population included people with an annual income of over 140,000 US dollars, and the richest percent of the German population included people with an annual income of over 256,000 euros (280,000 US dollars).
Oxfam calls for new taxes for climate-damaging ones Corporations
Oxfam explained that new taxes were now needed on climate-damaging corporations and the assets and income of the super-rich. This would significantly increase the financial scope for the transition to renewable energies. Ultimately, however, there is also a need to “overcome the current economic system and the fixation on profit-making, exploitation of natural resources and consumer-oriented lifestyles”.
The Oxfam data corresponds to a data analysis published in March by the newspaper “taz”. According to this, the richest people in Germany emit tens of times as many climate-damaging greenhouse gases as the average person. While the poorest emitted just over three tons of CO2 per year in 2019, the richest one percent emitted around 105 tons – almost 35 times as much, according to the newspaper, citing data from the World Inequality Lab, a think tank led by economist Thomas Piketty. reported.