RvTV95XBeoWealthiest 10% of US Households Responsible for 40% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Study
I’d like to see it divided up even more on the top 10%. To be in the top 10% of household income in the US, you would need to earn $184,000/year. That’s just two people earning $92k/year, which is reasonable for mid career or early mid career in or near a city.
TIL I'm in the top 10%. Yeah I can't believe I pollute any more than the other 90%. I work 100% from home, only my wife commutes 3 days a week. House is a modest 2200 sq ft. I don't have a boat or RV or plane or anything. I have some modest investment in hotels, cruise lines, and airlines (like under $5k all in). So yeah, this study leaves a lot to be desired.
Like lots of data, it’s an average. There are lots of people, similar to you, who are not absolute gas guzzlers I’m the top 10%. The top 10% also includes the 1% and the .1%, which will greatly increase the average for the entire category.
Similarly to how an average doesn’t tell the whole story, neither does how you invest. Assumptions have to be made to come up with these articles, such as how much carbon emissions are created through investments, which isn’t exactly cut and dry.
TL;DR just because an article says that a group of people are the cause of something, it doesn’t mean that everyone in the group is causing it.
It also depends on how the data is being used. For this study source of wages is being heavily weighted as well as what companies an individual chooses to invest in. So while household is the focus of the headline companies are more the focus, since by the metric used it seems as though someone who lives a green life style on paper living in a tent and biking but invests majority of their money and sees it grow would be a heavier polluter than someone who makes less but lives in a big house, drives suvs and pick ups, but doesn’t see their net worth increase with most money not being used towards investments but paying off debt.
What I got from the study is source of your wage and investments have more to do with how much of a high polluter you are than what you choose to do individually. So you could be a high wage earner who lives in a tent and bikes and invests a majority of their money that grows in profit, and that because of the growing investments and employer make you a higher polluter than someone who lives in a huge house and drives suvs and pick ups and doesn’t see their net worth grow due to so much of their stuff being financed.
With the money source being weighted this kind of feels more like an industry analysis despite the individual focus with how indirect it is, and based on some of comments here I guess people didn’t read the article either not realizing it has less to do with individual efforts like solar or private jets. At least that’s what I got from my attempt to understand the study.
Conclusion seems to be more that companies that pollute pay higher wages than a study of direct household pollution.
I’d like to see it divided up even more on the top 10%.
Well the boy howdy do I have good news for you! If you read the article linked (and even better, the open access Journal article linked) you may find some cool nuggets like:
“Among the highest-earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15-17% of national emissions), investment holdings account for 38-43% of their emissions,”
And
Then there were “super-emitters” with extremely high overall greenhouse gas emissions, corresponding to about the top 0.1% of households. About 15 days of emissions from a super-emitter was equal to a lifetime of emissions for someone in the poorest 10% in America.
Clicking into the journal article you may even find cool figures like this one, showing breakdown of emissions by category for each income group:
journals.plos.org/climate/article/figure?id=10.13…
Or this table showing the share of national emissions for each percentile:
Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance
Current policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase adaptation and mitigation funding are insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. It is clear that further action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and achieve a just climate future. Here, we offer a new perspective on emissions responsibility and climate finance by conducting an environmentally extended input output analysis that links 30 years (1990–2019) of United States (U.S.) household-level income data to the emissions generated in creating that income. To do this we draw on over 2.8 billion inter-sectoral transfers from the Eora MRIO database to calculate both supplier- and producer-based GHG emissions intensities and connect these with detailed income and demographic data for over 5 million U.S. individuals in the IPUMS Current Population Survey. We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines. In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution. Results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.
Every time I read about the ultra rich the exceed my negative expectations. 15 days = 1 lifetime is waaay more than I thought. My guess would have been like 1 year to build up that much. Wtf are they doing
Yea I read that. I said divided even more. I should have been clearer on that. I’d really like a top 7.5, top 5, top 2.5 and then top 1 and 0.1. There’s a HUGE gap between top 10 and top 1. Like 3-4 times more income.
I’d love for a statistician (or someone that remembers way more about statistics than I do) to give us an equation which allows us to more easily assign blame. My intuition tells me that the yacht-owning class would be a significant portion.
Yep. I’m barely in the top 10%, but I’m in a city and take transit and ride my bike, my wife uses the electric car to drive 5 mins uphill and gains about 60% back coming downhill. We eat local and do recycling and compost. The top 5% living in Texas or in suburbs driving trucks and SUVs are doing way more than me. I don’t think I’m an outlier in modern cities.