Edit: Note that this article is over 8 years old.
I had to look it up, but In 2021 the top 10% were earning about $120K/year.
Also, the guardian misrepresented the study in their title. The study is about “lifestyle emissions” The top 10% don’t produce 50% of all global emissions.
Exactly. Why don’t we separate this even further? Top 1% or top 0.5% or top 0.1%? That salary is almost required from a couple living in a city (60k/person, but one person is most likely making a large chunk of it), but people living in cities have way less of a carbon footprint by living closer to the grocery store, taking public transit, shopping locally, doing recycling/compost, community gardens, walking, etc.
I traveled twice as much in my car when I lived in Mississippi but made under 1/2 what I do now in Washington. I’m way more eco conscious now too.
It’s just barely above the low-income cutoff in some SF Bay counties.
The MSM don’t split it like that for the same reason they dilute wealth inequality. Because if the masses ever put 2 and 2 together, to realize that wealth inequality and the pursuit of profit is a corrosive force in society, and an existential threat to life, liberty, democracy, the rule of law, etc, etc — the root cause of many of the largest issues facing humanity — the ultra wealthy might be forced to give up their wealth… including the owners of MSM orgs.
You can find the updated report here:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/confronting-carbon-inequality
According to that about half of the top 10% lived in the US and EU in 2015. With especially China, but also countries like India having seen massive economic growth that share likely went down a lot. Looking at the Guardian article that is interesting as they position that as a rich country vs poor country problem, which is not entirely true.
$1 in 2015 is worth $1.30 today(2023), thus a 30% inflation from 2015 to 2023 ; 1/1.30= 0.76 ; 0.76*10= 7.6 ; thus 7.6% produce 50% of all global emissions. i know its bikini-bottom math but it does help to extrapolate things sometimes …
That top 10 percent figure is for USA. This is talking about world wide, so likely the top 10 percent is for a lot of people in the USA, and other western countries…There are a lot of people in 3rd world countries that don’t contribute any emissions compared to the average low income person in a western country.