HQ Team
October 28, 2024: The world’s top 50 richest billionaires, with their private jets, yachts and polluting investments, produce more carbon pollution in over an hour than an average person does in their lifetime, a study by Oxfam reports.
‘Carbon Inequality Kills’ tracked how the super-rich were fueling inequality, hunger, and death globally compared to the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. It comes ahead of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan amid fears that climate breakdown is accelerating, driven largely by emissions of the richest people on the planet.
Jeff Bezos’ two private jets spent nearly 25 days in the air over 12 months and emitted as much carbon as the average US Amazon employee would in 207 years. Carlos Slim took 92 trips in his private jet, equivalent to circling the globe five times.
The Walton family, heirs of the Walmart retail chain, own three superyachts that, in one year, produced as much carbon as around 1,714 Walmart shop workers.
Oxfam found that, on average, 50 of the world’s richest billionaires took 184 flights in a single year, spending 425 hours in the air —producing as much carbon as the average person would in 300 years.
In a year, their yachts emitted as much carbon as the average person would in 860 years.
‘Personal playground’
“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
“Their dirty investments and luxury toys —private jets and yachts— aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet.”
If the world continues its current emissions path, the carbon budget — the amount of CO2 that can still be added to the atmosphere without causing global temperatures to rise above 1.5°C — will be depleted in about four years.
However, if everyone’s emissions matched those of the richest 1%, the carbon budget would be used up in under five months.
And if everyone started emitting as much carbon as the private jets and superyachts of the average billionaire in Oxfam’s study, it would be gone in two days.
“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and — make no mistake — threatening lives. It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed are fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future.
“It’s lethal,” said Behar.
Influence over big polluting corporations
The report, according to Oxfam, was the first-ever study to look at both the luxury transport and polluting investments of billionaires and presented detailed new evidence of how their outsized emissions are accelerating climate breakdown and wreaking havoc on lives and economies.
The world’s poorest countries and communities have done the least to cause the climate crisis, yet they experience its most dangerous consequences.
Emissions from the 50 billionaire’s investments were about 340 times their emissions from private jets and superyachts combined, according to the study.
“Through these investments, billionaires have a huge influence over some of the world’s biggest corporations and are driving us over the edge of climate disaster,” the report stated.
Nearly 40% of billionaire investments analysed in Oxfam’s research were in highly polluting industries — oil, mining, shipping and cement.
On average, a billionaire’s investment portfolio is almost twice as polluting as an investment in the S&P 500. However, if their investments were in a low-carbon-intensity investment fund, their investment emissions would be 13 times lower.
Oxfam detailed three critical areas, providing national and regional breakdowns, where the emissions of the world’s richest 1% since 1990 are already having —and are projected to have — devastating consequences.
Drop in global economic output
In terms of global inequality, the emissions of the richest 1% have caused global economic output to drop by $2.9 trillion since 1990. Low- and lower-middle-income countries will lose about 2.5%of their cumulative GDP between 1990 and 2050.
Southern Asia, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will lose 3%, 2.4% and 2.4%, respectively. High-income countries, on the other hand, will accrue economic gains.
The second critical issue, according to the report, is hunger. The emissions of the richest 1% have caused crop losses that could have provided enough calories to feed 14.5 million people a year between 1990 and 2023.
This will rise to 46 million people annually between 2023 and 2050, with Latin America and the Caribbean especially affected (about nine million a year by 2050).
The third area of concern is that 78% of excess deaths due to heat through 2120 will occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
Wealth tax, ban on private jets
“It’s become so tiring to be resilient. It’s not something that I have chosen to be. It was necessary to survive,” said Marinel Sumook Ubaldo, a young climate activist from the Philippines was quoted as saying in the report.
Rich countries have failed to keep their $100 billion climate finance promise, and heading into COP29, there is no indication that they will set a new climate finance goal that adequately addresses the climate financing needs of Global South countries.
Oxfam warned that the cost of global warming will continue to rise unless the richest drastically reduce their emissions. It called on governments to introduce wealth taxes and ban luxury consumption such as superyachts.
Oxfam’s research shows that the richest 1%, made up of 77 million people, including billionaires, millionaires and those earning $310,000 or more a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, if invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures by 2030, billionaires’ wealth could cover the entire funding gap between what governments have pledged and what is needed to keep global warming below 1.5⁰C.
