probablyasocialecologist:

With the IPCC report and climate change in the news, a couple of reminders are due:

“The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” – contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015.”

World’s wealthiest ‘at heart of climate problem’

“Luxury consumption by the rich concentrates economic activity and delivers negligible extra wellbeing, yet sucks up vast amounts of resources.”

Why a more equal world would be easier to decarbonise

“Affluent individuals can emit several ten thousand times the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to the global poor.”

Bill Gates, Climate Warrior. And Super Emitter.

“Half of all our economic activity – all the mines, all the factories, all the power stations, all the shipping, and all of the ecological impact that’s associated with these things – is done to make rich people richer.”

We can’t have billionaires and stop climate change

“The wealthiest 0.54%, about 40 million people, are responsible for 14% of lifestyle-related greenhouse gas emissions.”

Affluence is killing the planet, warn scientists

The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis!

Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds

“The world’s superyacht fleet uses over thirty-two million gallons of oil and produces 627 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year . The world’s superyachts consume and pollute more than entire nations.”

The Rich Are Committing Crimes Against Nature

“The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury.”

For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth | George Monbiot

The wealthy pose our single biggest obstacle to environmental progress.

The World Would Be a Better Place Without the Rich

“The people who are actively cranking up the global thermostat and threatening to drown 20 percent of the global population are the billionaires in the boardrooms.”

Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change

There no undivided, undifferentiated “humanity” that caused climate change. It is the fault of the ultra-rich, of capitalism, and of an economic system that prioritises growth over all else.

A better world is possible. It doesn’t include rich people.