A recent study finds that U.S. elites are disproportionately responsible for the extreme weather events linked to climate change like heat waves, droughts, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes, and rising sea levels. Study co-author Jared Starr, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, notes that the top 1% of American households are responsible for more emissions (15-17%) than the lower-earning half of households put together (14% of national emissions).
"Our study is the first to link U.S. households to the greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution generated when creating their incomes," said Starr. "We found that the highest-earning top 10% of households are responsible for about 40% of U.S. GHG."
Although the United States only includes 5% of the world's population, it is accountable for more than a quarter of the activity fueling climate change. This is in large part because of America's dominance as the world's foremost economic power — a dominance reflected in its large investor class, which because of its wealth is figuratively steering Earth off of the climate cliff.
"For the first time, we also quantify the share of emissions related to investment," Starr explained. "The share of emissions coming from investments increases as we move up the income ladder. For the top 0.1% households, more than half of their emissions are coming from investment income."
Starr used a visual analogy to illustrate his point.
"If we picture this on a graph and imagine the bottom 10% households' emissions are the size of an average house, then the top 1%’s emissions would be the size of five Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other, and the top 0.1%'s emissions would be taller than Mount Everest," he said. "This scale of emissions inequality was unknown before our study. I think it is a climate justice issue and it poses a fundamental challenge to our political system to respond to this level of emissions disparity."
CHART SOURCE (Headline added) — https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190
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