Over 25 years, the richest 1 per cent of the global population emitted twice as much CO2 as the poorest 50 per cent. That is the finding of Oxfam.
We tend to think of climate change as a phenomenon that affects everyone equally, but that is only a half-truth. If we look into responsibilities, we find that a few — very few — people have spent recent decades enjoying a comfortable standard of living, consuming, travelling (and even wasting) with no regard for the consequences. The poorest half of the global population, by contrast, is bearing the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed only minimally to triggering it. "This extreme CO2 inequality is a direct consequence of decades of governments pursuing excessively unequal and greenhouse-gas-intensive growth," argues Tim Gore, author of Confronting carbon inequality, the new report on the subject published by Oxfam — the NGO that fights poverty — together with the Stockholm environment institute.
The study examines two different parameters. The first is cumulative greenhouse gas emissions over a given period of time. The second is the carbon budget — that is, the CO2 that can still be generated in the future while keeping the rise in average global temperatures within the threshold set by the Paris Agreement: 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The time frame considered is the period 1990–2015, twenty-five years in which annual emissions grew by 60 per cent and cumulative emissions doubled.
On both dimensions, the world appears to be split down the middle. The richest 10 per cent of the global population, amounting to around 630 million people, is responsible for 52 per cent of cumulative emissions and consumed 31 per cent of the carbon budget. Conversely, the poorest half of humanity (3.1 billion individuals) generated just 7 per cent of CO2, "making do" with 4 per cent of the available carbon budget.
The gap deepens further when we focus on the narrow elite of the privileged. The 63 million individuals at the very top of the pyramid alone caused 15 per cent of cumulative emissions, consuming 9 per cent of the carbon budget. In other words, the richest 1 per cent generated twice as many greenhouse gases as the poorest half of the population.
One might argue that CO2 in the atmosphere is the inevitable price to pay for economic development and the fight against poverty. This argument falls apart, however, when one examines the graph on emissions growth between 1990 and 2015. Those generated by the poorest half of the population remained virtually unchanged, contributing a meagre 6 per cent to overall growth. Conversely, the wealthiest 5 per cent (around 315 million people) account for more than a third of the increase in emissions that occurred over the 25 years in question. "This means that the global carbon budget is being rapidly depleted not to guarantee a dignified lifestyle for all of humanity, but above all to allow a minority of the ultra-wealthy to consume ever more," Oxfam states in black and white.
2020 is indisputably an extraordinary year, as the strict lockdown measures adopted to contain the coronavirus pandemic caused CO2 emissions to plummet. According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the drop compared to last year could be between 4 and 7 per cent. This figure, however, is only temporary and will certainly not be enough to save the future of the climate. Indeed, without real and lasting change we will exhaust our carbon budget by 2030. The consumption of the richest 10 per cent of the population alone — Oxfam warns — would be enough to use it all up in just over twenty years, even if, hypothetically, the emissions of all the rest of humanity were to disappear overnight.
"Simply restoring our pre-Covid economies — outdated, unjust and polluting — is no longer a viable option. Governments must seize this opportunity to reshape our economies and build a better tomorrow for all of us," Tim Gore adds. Governments, he concludes, should introduce taxes and restrictions on the most polluting luxury goods, such as SUVs and frequent private jet flights. "The proceeds should be reinvested in public services and low-environmental-impact sectors, in order to create jobs and contribute to the fight against poverty."
