Matthias SchmelzerThe carbon emissions of the richest 1 percent are more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity.
We can't afford the super rich.
Banner drop at today's climate justice rally in Berlin. (Photo: @alxaraya)
JaddyI'd like to add some facts to what others responded. It's not (only) the super rich, even in terms of GHGs.
It's us, not them (when only looking at the numbers; see below)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00955-z has it in fig. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00955-z/figures/2
The top 50% by wealth emit ~90% of all GHGs, where the middle 40% emit as much as the top 10%.
I guess most of "us" here belong to the top 10% wrt the world banks global income groups https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-banks-income-groups?time=2021
Ourworldindata has another visualization of GHG vs income
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region (data from 2016)
It's us.
But!
We are bound to the products and services offered and available and our material resources.
If the only available and_or affordable food, housing, heating, mobility is made with fossil fuels, most of us don't have many alternatives.
As long as the real and future costs of harmful (e.g. fossil) production are not part of the calculation, there won't be much change.
Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019 - Nature Sustainability
Understanding the connection between economic inequality and climate change requires rich and reliable data. This study combines recently assembled data on income and wealth inequality with environmental data to shed light on the uneven individual contributions to climate change across the world.