The figures published by Oxfam are particularly stark in France, where the richest 1% emit as much carbon in one year as the poorest 50% in 10 years.
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The income threshold for being among the global top 1% was adjusted by country using purchasing power parity – for example in the United States the threshold would be $140,000, whereas the Kenyan equivalent would be about $40,000.
Stark picture in France
Within-country analyses also painted very stark pictures. For example, in France, the richest 1% emit as much carbon in one year as the poorest 50% in 10 years.
Excluding the carbon associated with his investments, Bernard Arnault, the billionaire founder of Louis Vuitton and richest man in France, has a footprint 1,270 times greater than that of the average Frenchman.
The key message, according to Lawson, was that policy actions must be progressive. “We think that unless governments enact climate policy that is progressive, where you see the people who emit the most being asked to take the biggest sacrifices, then we’re never going to get good politics around this,” he said.
These measures could include, for example, a tax on flying more than ten times a year, or a tax on non-green investments that is much higher than the tax on green investments.
While the current report focused on carbon linked only to individual consumption, “the personal consumption of the super-rich is dwarfed by emissions resulting from their investments in companies,” the report found.
Nor are the wealthy invested in polluting industries at a similar ratio to any given investor – billionaires are twice as likely to be invested in polluting industries than the average for the Standard & Poor 500, previous Oxfam research has shown.
You can read the report here : Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity
