Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity • Hacker News Board

Re: Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity

#11

Post by joegibbs » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 12:23 AM UTC

MilnerRoute wrote: post #7

How? The press release asserts this statistic, but I can't figure out what exactly the 1% are doing that's causing this pollution... There's a vague reference to "plundering" the planet, which makes me think they're saying the actions of polluting corporations are the responsibility of the 1% (and not, say, the 2%....)

It's one of those things that's technically true based on using statistics selectively. If you count all their investments, given that the top 1% control 43% of all wealth, they produce a large percentage of global emissions (but at 16%, not as large as their share of the wealth would suggest).

But it's irrelevant to climate change because there's nothing that you can do to them that would substantially decrease those emissions. It's not like they're causing a huge amount of pollution from their private jets and golf courses. If you redistribute their shares to someone poorer then the same amount of pollution will be produced, because a factory that produces five million tons of CO₂ does so regardless of the makeup of the owners.

Re: Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity

#12

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 12:59 AM UTC

joegibbs wrote: post #11

MilnerRoute wrote: post #7

How? The press release asserts this statistic, but I can't figure out what exactly the 1% are doing that's causing this pollution... There's a vague reference to "plundering" the planet, which makes me think they're saying the actions of polluting corporations are the responsibility of the 1% (and not, say, the 2%....)

It's one of those things that's technically true based on using statistics selectively. If you count all their investments, given that the top 1% control 43% of all wealth, they produce a large percentage of global emissions (but at 16%, not as large as their share of the wealth would suggest). But it's irrelevant to climate change because there's nothing that you can do to them that would substantially decrease thos…

That also assumes investment ownership is the appropriate approach to attribute emissions.

Re: Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity

#13

Post by 7e » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 2:57 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #3

This is a semi-fake study. They attribute emissions from investments to the person investing, this obviously leads to a lot of double counting. I'm flagging this.

It's not obvious to me that there is double counting. The study says, "Individual carbon emissions can be divided into personal consumption emissions, emissions through government spending, and emissions linked to investments." Someone needs to be accountable for corporate emissions, and that someone is the owners. That's entirely reasonable.

If a dollar is spent by a corporation on a person, and that person uses it to buy something else that took carbon to produce, yes, you could imagine double counting the emission. But that can be fixed simply by rolling up the carbon emission to the ultimate consumer: a person, a government, or the owners of a corporation. Corporations can pollute by themselves: buying and using corporate jets, for example. Those can't be attributed to upstream consumers.

If anything, this undercounts the emissions of the super rich, since they also are responsible for a good portion of government spending, too--either directly, because of the outsize taxes they pay, or indirectly, because of corporate taxation of profits of companies that they own. But since they don't control that government spending (at least in theory) it seems OK to not attribute it to them.

Re: Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity

#14

Post by ars » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

7e wrote: post #13

ars wrote: post #3

This is a semi-fake study. They attribute emissions from investments to the person investing, this obviously leads to a lot of double counting. I'm flagging this.

It's not obvious to me that there is double counting. The study says, "Individual carbon emissions can be divided into personal consumption emissions, emissions through government spending, and emissions linked to investments." Someone needs to be accountable for corporate emissions, and that someone is the owners. That's entirely reasonable. If a dollar is spent by a corporation on a person, and that person uses it…

We're talking about investments, they count for example if someone invests in an appliance factory, the emissions of the appliances are billed to the investor.

But of course those emissions are also the responsibility of whoever buys, and operates the appliance.

Because virtually every company and factory is owned by somebody, they've managed to put all the emissions into the responsibility of the owner of the factory, and they give regular people zero responsibility.

I'll ask you: if I fly on a plane, who's responsible for the emissions? Me for flying? Or the owner of the airplane for operating it?

Re: Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity

#15

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Oct 28, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #10

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to put into context, and to maybe do more analysis into 0.1% and 0.01% and so on, because many of us, while being "one percenters" are neither really rich nor really pollute a lot.

Yeah something like %pollution accumulated vs %rich would be interesting. However being in 1% and not considered rich signifies total fiasco of western model. Basically you're relegating 99% into the poor category. American dream in action

Not really, it just means that you cannot have global rules for local differences. Car-free zones are possible in tight european cities with great public transport, but unusable in eg. rural US.

Same is true for "being (globally) rich", grouping all those people together and treating them as a single group.

Reading this this: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charit... - means that 60k after tax brings you to top 1% globally. That's 5k per month.

Reading this: https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran... says that average rent is ~3.4k in san francisco, which means that living alone is pretty hard if not impossible after other expenses. On the other hand, in many countries, 5k per month makes you very rich.

So, Top 1% is meaningless if you can barely afford rent in a location where you live, since you're far from rich, and your CO2 usage is pretty much the same as someone with 1k after tax in a poor country (car, heat, lights, fridge, etc.). 5k in a poor country can build you a huge villa, where just the heat produces a lot more CO2.

But people like to think of them selves as 99-percenters, and that 1-percenters won't have rent problems.