The richest 10% of the world caused two thirds of global warming: study

The richest 10 percent of the people in the world have been responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, the researchers said on Wednesday.

In the first study, they reported how the rich and invest the risk of fatal heat waves and drought significantly to quantify the effects of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events.

“We link the CO2 footprints of the richest people directly with the effects on the real climate,” said the senior author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, to AFP.

“It is a shifting from carbon calculation to responsibility for climate.”

Compared to the global average, the richest percent, for example, contributed 26 times more to a heat waves of the century and 17 times more to drought in the Amazon, according to the results published in nature.

The emissions of the richest 10 percent in China and the United States, which together make up almost half of the global carbon pollution, each led to an increase in the heat extract of two to triple.

Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated the average surface of the earth by 1.3 degrees Celsius in the past 30 years.

Schoengart and colleagues combined economic data and climate mulations to pursue emissions from various global income groups and to assess their effects on certain types of extreme weather compliance.

The researchers also emphasized the role of emissions that are embedded in financial investments, and not only in terms of lifestyle and personal consumption.

“Climate measures that do not deal with the oversized responsibilities of the richest members of the company are missing one of the most powerful levers that we have to reduce to reduce future damage,” said the senior author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the integrated climate effect research group at the International Institute for Applied System Ana.

– billionaire tax –

He found that the owner of capital could be held accountable to prosperity and carbon -intensive investments for climate effects.

Earlier investigations have shown that the taxation of emissions in connection with assets is more fair than broad carbon taxes that tend to burden those with lower incomes.

The latest initiatives to increase taxes to the super -rich and multinational companies are largely to stand, especially since Donald Trump has regained the White House.

Last year, Brazil-as hosts of the G20-a two percent tax pushed for the net wealth of people with a fortune of more than $ 1 billion.

Although the G20 leaders agreed to “cooperative to ensure that people with extremely high networks are effectively taxed”, so far there has been no follow-up.

In 2021, almost 140 countries agreed on a global corporate tax for multinational companies, with almost half of a minimum rate of 15 percent being supported. However, these conversations also stalled.

According to Forbes Magazine, almost a third of the world's billionaires come together from the United States than China, India and Germany.

According to NGO Oxfam of anti-poverty, the richest 1 percent have accumulated a new fortune of $ 42 trillion in the past ten years.

It says that the richest percent have more prosperity than the lowest 95 percent together.

By Marlowe Hood