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.
If you’re reading this than you’re probably included in that 10%
Yeah, this is true.
From the actual report:
The richest 10% (around 630 million people) accounted for 46% of the total emissions growth – only marginally less than the 49% contributed by the middle 40%. The poorest 50% barely increased their consumption emissions at all.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-top-countries-by-wealth-per-person/
Adding up the top 10 countries’ populations doesn’t even reach 630 million.
People will probably use this to say that the top 10% need to pay for taxes and be held accountable, without realizing they’re probably in that 10%.
I’d actually like to see the 10% broken down even further.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but given what I know a small bit about planetary poverty, if you’re reading this from a place with heaTing or air conditioning, on your own personal smart device or computer, you aren’t in that bottom 50%.
If I remember right, even with my problems I’m not even in the bottom 60%. Some places make in a month what I make in a day, when I have work.
Rating wealth by income (which this study does) is unusual and difficult. I don’t actually see any income numbers attached to their analysis which is suspicious.
Anyway, anyone with a net worth of around 90k USD is in that top 10%. Median net worth in the US was 127k in 2019. Which means that more than half of the 350M people in this country are in the worlds richest 10% (by wealth)
Picking a random American off the street gives you better than coin toss odds of finding a person in the “mega polluter” group you see in the thumbnail graph.
Even doing everything you can to “reduce carbon footprints” it’s still going to be orders of magnitude larger than a small village farmer in the middle of Nepal.
Doesnt mean it’s not worth doing, it just means there’s a lot more to be done.
Guaranteed if you own a house in the US you’re part of the world’s top 10% in terms of wealth.
That doesn’t translate directly to emissions, though, because the vast majority of emissions are industry and travel, so what you buy and how you live are much greater factors than heating and cooling. Go vegan and you instantly drop out of that “contribute to 50% of lifestyle emissions” zone.
For reference, earning at least $100k/yr puts you in the top 10%. Earning $3k/yr puts you in the top 50%.
Of the world?
A net worth of $93,170 U.S. is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world,