10 ms·

World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions (2015) [pdf]

79 points by perfunctory 7y ago

dan-robertson 7y ago
This is pretty unsurprising, right? If you want to associate carbon produced to people then you just say that when a company produces carbon it is the owners who are proportionally responsible for it (rather than eg the worker who shovels the coal into the fire). So this is basically just saying that the richest 10% of the world population own companies which are collectively responsible for producing half of the worlds carbon. But I think it would be true that the richest 10% of the world population (700 million people or so, twice the population of the US) own the companies responsible for doing at least half of just about everything. For example they produce more than 50% of the research about climate change, or the efforts to frustrate climate change.
- harryh 7y ago
  Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. It's the customers who create the demand that the companies only form to satisfy. By your standard, a few members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are personally responsible for a sizable portion of global emissions and completely lets off the hook every single consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.
  - lunias 7y ago
    Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. I feel as though this only holds if you assume that all demands are just and deserve or should be allowed to be satisfied. For instance, if I identify that there is an under-served demand for anonymous contract killing then why can't I start a company which produces the corresponding supply? Assuming it was legal, would you place the blame on me for offering such a service or my customers for consuming it? I believe that careful regulation is a necessary evil to mitigate the self-serving nature of human beings at scale. That regulation seems to me to be better leveraged against the companies profiting on the back of unreasonable demands than those demanding what is in their nature to demand. Asking for something impacts no one other than the involved parties. Fulfilling the ask could potentially impact the world. If it costs companies too much to produce a good (due to caps placed on their consumption and emission) then that good will cease to exist because it becomes inviable in the current environment. Although the demand remains to be addressed in the future when the environment is capable of supporting it - should the demand still exist at that time. If you take the other approach and instead charge the consumer more in order to consume the good; then while sales will decline in general it may simply result in the good being repositioned in another demographic at the new price point. Or unrelated corners could be cut in production in order to offset the mandated increase in price without ever addressing the causes for the increase. It seems slower and more error prone to attempt to change the behavior of a company through the behavior of their customers. Why not just set sane limits which force companies to adapt in order to continue servicing the demands of their customers? Customers expectations will change too based on what's available; just as I don't expect to be able to cheaply and easily put out a hit on someone via an app on my phone.
Johnny555 7y ago
The headline is not quite accurate, the report refers to the richest 10% consuming 49% of the lifestyle global carbon emissions (i.e. household emissions), which themselves are around 64% of the total global emissions.
- krupan 7y ago
  So they are producing about 1/4 then?
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    >So they are producing about 1/4 then? We. Unless you are a extreme outlier here. The top 1% globally make 32k USD a year and up. I'd assume the vast majority if not all of the people reading this are in the top 10%.
    - jdboyd 7y ago
      The 2016 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute says you need $744,400 in household assets to be in the top 1% globally. I don't think most Americans making $32k/yr will have that level of assets. In a different report from the same place, they say the average us household was just over 300k in 2014.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I'm not readily finding a nice blurb that says "$xk annual income puts you in the top 10% globally." I've supported three adults with serious health issues on under $20k annually for years and was homeless for nearly six years while participating regularly here. I'm American. I have also seen comments on HN from people in very poor parts of the world. I don't think I'm the poorest person on HN. Yes, the population on HN skews towards the well heeled, apparently pretty strongly. But I have zero reason to believe that all participants here are globally in the top ten percent for wealth/income. And, in fact, I have reason to believe otherwise. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-in-the-richest-10-percent-worldwide.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-b... A net worth of $93,170 U.S. is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world That absolutely does not include me. https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-the-top-10-top-5-and-the-top-1 https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-t... Meh, tired of looking for a definitive figure.
gibolt 7y ago
It seems that only a appropriate tax or other regulation on carbon across industries will drive rapid change. Unfortunately, politicians all think the personal and/or economic costs aren't worth it.
- phil248 7y ago
  Some politicians in one US party do agree it's worth the costs. A few are even running for president.
- imtringued 7y ago
  The EU just has to decrease the number of certificates. The system works so far but it's not aggressive enough in my opinion.
ggreer 7y ago
Note that this is "lifestyle consumption emissions" not total emissions. > Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total. > Oxfam’s estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of magnitude, but also as conservative... The report then goes on to say that women are hit harder by climate change than men and rails against "carbon baron billionaires" (the increase of which seems to be due to economic growth, not petroleum companies growing faster than the rest of the economy). The effect this report had on me was to erode my trust in Oxfam.
tanilama 7y ago
Then probably the whole US population is at fault
- pkaye 7y ago
  Except all those 40% who don't have $400 to spare.
  - tigershark 7y ago
    But a good part of which makes debt for a car?
  - tanilama 7y ago
    Doesn't mean their carbon footprint is low.
tengbretson 7y ago
I can't think of a less interesting statistic. > World's richest 10% produce half of global food. > World's richest 10% produce half of global medicine. > World's richest 10% produce half of global scientific papers. > World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  > World's richest 10% produce half of global food. Citation required.
- komali2 7y ago
  > World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about Completely disagree there - the stories I got out of kids in remote Chinese villages were way more interesting than the shit I see on top of news.google.com, and far less depressing to boot.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  >> World's richest 10% produce half of global food. It's more proper to think of the production of carbon emissions as an act of consumption, making the parallel statement " World's richest 10% consume half of global food." By caloric content, that is almost surely false. By retail price-paid value, that is more likely true (but irrelevant).
- Johnny555 7y ago
  > World's richest 10% produce half of global food. I'm probably in the world's richest 10% (I earn a decent salary in the SF Bay Area), but I don't produce any of the global food. I know how much a close relative earns on his farm, and his net income for a family of 6 is much less than my income. The bank owns so much of his farm and equipment that his net worth is less than mine too. Some of my stock market investments likely go toward companies involved in food production, but that's a pretty indirect way to claim I'm responsible for any food production.
makerofspoons 7y ago
If you make more than $25k USD you are in that top 10%. This shows just how unsustainable our lifestyles have become and how in need of de-growth we are. But how do you make people step back from owning cars, taking flights, or eating imported food? People are not going to do so willingly, and our infrastructure in many countries was built in such a wasteful spread-out way that we will have to burn even more fuel to reinvent it.
- yters 7y ago
  Wouldn't stopping our production of carbon dioxide essentially mean ending our industrial civilization? We would have to go back to an agricultural civilization like during the Middle Ages? Frankly, that seems impossible to bring about unless there is worldwide systemic collapse brought on by global warming or some other global catastrophe.
  - makerofspoons 7y ago
    We don't have to stop emitting all carbon dioxide, we need to develop the technology to capture and sequester what we do emit, however.
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      That technology has existed for billions of years: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou... I personally calculated that planting trees would be thousands of times more cost-effective than driving Tesla vehicles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034 Cutting down a fraction of industrial activity- which represents a fraction of human-made CO2 output, which is only about 5% of mother nature's CO2 output- seems a lot less efficient than improving upon mother nature's own carbon sequestration schemes. It's better to sequester potentially all of the CO2 in the atmosphere instead of targeting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2
      - 7y ago
downrightmike 7y ago
Good thing we've added billions of people to the world, or the percentage would be less diluted.

79 points by perfunctory 7y ago

This is pretty unsurprising, right? If you want to associate carbon produced to people then you just say that when a company produces carbon it is the owners who are proportionally responsible for it (rather than eg the worker who shovels the coal into the fire). So this is basically just saying that the richest 10% of the world population own companies which are collectively responsible for producing half of the worlds carbon. But I think it would be true that the richest 10% of the world population (700 million people or so, twice the population of the US) own the companies responsible for doing at least half of just about everything. For example they produce more than 50% of the research about climate change, or the efforts to frustrate climate change.

harryh 7y ago
Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. It's the customers who create the demand that the companies only form to satisfy. By your standard, a few members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are personally responsible for a sizable portion of global emissions and completely lets off the hook every single consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.
- lunias 7y ago
  Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. I feel as though this only holds if you assume that all demands are just and deserve or should be allowed to be satisfied. For instance, if I identify that there is an under-served demand for anonymous contract killing then why can't I start a company which produces the corresponding supply? Assuming it was legal, would you place the blame on me for offering such a service or my customers for consuming it? I believe that careful regulation is a necessary evil to mitigate the self-serving nature of human beings at scale. That regulation seems to me to be better leveraged against the companies profiting on the back of unreasonable demands than those demanding what is in their nature to demand. Asking for something impacts no one other than the involved parties. Fulfilling the ask could potentially impact the world. If it costs companies too much to produce a good (due to caps placed on their consumption and emission) then that good will cease to exist because it becomes inviable in the current environment. Although the demand remains to be addressed in the future when the environment is capable of supporting it - should the demand still exist at that time. If you take the other approach and instead charge the consumer more in order to consume the good; then while sales will decline in general it may simply result in the good being repositioned in another demographic at the new price point. Or unrelated corners could be cut in production in order to offset the mandated increase in price without ever addressing the causes for the increase. It seems slower and more error prone to attempt to change the behavior of a company through the behavior of their customers. Why not just set sane limits which force companies to adapt in order to continue servicing the demands of their customers? Customers expectations will change too based on what's available; just as I don't expect to be able to cheaply and easily put out a hit on someone via an app on my phone.

Johnny555 7y ago

The headline is not quite accurate, the report refers to the richest 10% consuming 49% of the lifestyle global carbon emissions (i.e. household emissions), which themselves are around 64% of the total global emissions.

krupan 7y ago
So they are producing about 1/4 then?
- fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  >So they are producing about 1/4 then? We. Unless you are a extreme outlier here. The top 1% globally make 32k USD a year and up. I'd assume the vast majority if not all of the people reading this are in the top 10%.
  - jdboyd 7y ago
    The 2016 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute says you need $744,400 in household assets to be in the top 1% globally. I don't think most Americans making $32k/yr will have that level of assets. In a different report from the same place, they say the average us household was just over 300k in 2014.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I'm not readily finding a nice blurb that says "$xk annual income puts you in the top 10% globally." I've supported three adults with serious health issues on under $20k annually for years and was homeless for nearly six years while participating regularly here. I'm American. I have also seen comments on HN from people in very poor parts of the world. I don't think I'm the poorest person on HN. Yes, the population on HN skews towards the well heeled, apparently pretty strongly. But I have zero reason to believe that all participants here are globally in the top ten percent for wealth/income. And, in fact, I have reason to believe otherwise. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-in-the-richest-10-percent-worldwide.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-b... A net worth of $93,170 U.S. is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world That absolutely does not include me. https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-the-top-10-top-5-and-the-top-1 https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-t... Meh, tired of looking for a definitive figure.

gibolt 7y ago

It seems that only a appropriate tax or other regulation on carbon across industries will drive rapid change. Unfortunately, politicians all think the personal and/or economic costs aren't worth it.

phil248 7y ago
Some politicians in one US party do agree it's worth the costs. A few are even running for president.
imtringued 7y ago
The EU just has to decrease the number of certificates. The system works so far but it's not aggressive enough in my opinion.

ggreer 7y ago

Note that this is "lifestyle consumption emissions" not total emissions. > Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total. > Oxfam’s estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of magnitude, but also as conservative... The report then goes on to say that women are hit harder by climate change than men and rails against "carbon baron billionaires" (the increase of which seems to be due to economic growth, not petroleum companies growing faster than the rest of the economy). The effect this report had on me was to erode my trust in Oxfam.

tanilama 7y ago

Then probably the whole US population is at fault

pkaye 7y ago
Except all those 40% who don't have $400 to spare.
- tigershark 7y ago
  But a good part of which makes debt for a car?
- tanilama 7y ago
  Doesn't mean their carbon footprint is low.

tengbretson 7y ago

I can't think of a less interesting statistic. > World's richest 10% produce half of global food. > World's richest 10% produce half of global medicine. > World's richest 10% produce half of global scientific papers. > World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about.

inflatableDodo 7y ago
> World's richest 10% produce half of global food. Citation required.
komali2 7y ago
> World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about Completely disagree there - the stories I got out of kids in remote Chinese villages were way more interesting than the shit I see on top of news.google.com, and far less depressing to boot.
sokoloff 7y ago
>> World's richest 10% produce half of global food. It's more proper to think of the production of carbon emissions as an act of consumption, making the parallel statement " World's richest 10% consume half of global food." By caloric content, that is almost surely false. By retail price-paid value, that is more likely true (but irrelevant).
Johnny555 7y ago
> World's richest 10% produce half of global food. I'm probably in the world's richest 10% (I earn a decent salary in the SF Bay Area), but I don't produce any of the global food. I know how much a close relative earns on his farm, and his net income for a family of 6 is much less than my income. The bank owns so much of his farm and equipment that his net worth is less than mine too. Some of my stock market investments likely go toward companies involved in food production, but that's a pretty indirect way to claim I'm responsible for any food production.

makerofspoons 7y ago

If you make more than $25k USD you are in that top 10%. This shows just how unsustainable our lifestyles have become and how in need of de-growth we are. But how do you make people step back from owning cars, taking flights, or eating imported food? People are not going to do so willingly, and our infrastructure in many countries was built in such a wasteful spread-out way that we will have to burn even more fuel to reinvent it.

yters 7y ago
Wouldn't stopping our production of carbon dioxide essentially mean ending our industrial civilization? We would have to go back to an agricultural civilization like during the Middle Ages? Frankly, that seems impossible to bring about unless there is worldwide systemic collapse brought on by global warming or some other global catastrophe.
- makerofspoons 7y ago
  We don't have to stop emitting all carbon dioxide, we need to develop the technology to capture and sequester what we do emit, however.
  - ddxxdd 7y ago
    That technology has existed for billions of years: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou... I personally calculated that planting trees would be thousands of times more cost-effective than driving Tesla vehicles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034 Cutting down a fraction of industrial activity- which represents a fraction of human-made CO2 output, which is only about 5% of mother nature's CO2 output- seems a lot less efficient than improving upon mother nature's own carbon sequestration schemes. It's better to sequester potentially all of the CO2 in the atmosphere instead of targeting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2
    - 7y ago

downrightmike 7y ago

Good thing we've added billions of people to the world, or the percentage would be less diluted.