10 ms·

Emissions of richest 1 percent more than double the emissions of poorest 50%

74 points by makerofspoons 6y ago

nobrains 6y ago
Does this follow zipf's law / Pareto principle, like in this vsauce video: https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE
- wyre 6y ago
  I didn’t read this article but a Guardian article about the same thing mentions the top 10% accounting for 52% of emissions. Bit more drastic than Pareto.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    By Pareto, I would expect the top 20% of the top 20% to be responsible for 80% of the top 20% outcomes (which are 80% of total). That would imply that the top 4% would account for 64% of outcome under discussion, which is much more drastic than the top 10% accounting for only 52% of total.
maerF0x0 6y ago
If we hold people accountable for their offspring then the poorest have orders of magnitude more heirs and thus should multiply their emissions. The choice to have (greater than replacement) children should be seen as an "emissions" or "income" choice for this kind of reporting, else it fails to capture the systemic externalities of their actual lifestyle. This, as i understand it, is a sort of form of The Repugnant conclusion: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ , whereby the choice to increase population is a choice to divide the resources amongst greater and greater people, resulting in a smaller share per person. I don't think the developed world, or the "1%" should be held accountable for these sorts of outcomes.
- defterGoose 6y ago
  If you hold people accountable for their heirs then you've introduced a recursion that makes it nigh-impossible to calculate the emissions of any group. In any case, the title figure is rather staggering, and means that the exponent on the 1% assures their heirs' level of consumption too. The only way to put blame on someone's shoulders is to assign it to those in decision-making positions, which, you guessed it, is overwhelmingly the 1%.
  - maerF0x0 6y ago
    > those in decision-making positions How do the poor not have choices? They have a choice to have >replacement children or not. > you've introduced a recursion that makes it nigh-impossible to calculate the emissions of any group. If you assume those heirs will never hit a terminal at replacement birthrate, then there probably would need to be some weighting function that approaches 0 after many generations.
    - defterGoose 6y ago
      My point is that the set of choices available to the poorest among us is largely determined by the richest among us. The only way for the poor to improve their situation is by playing the game of consumptive behavior that has been laid before them by those in positions of power. Keep in mind that reproduction is a deep-seated biological drive and that the one factor strongly correlated with lower birthrates, education, is a scarce resource and one that is subject to all sorts of manipulation at many levels of governance. It's also somewhat-to-highly myopic to assume that relative wealth isn't an important factor in an era when humans are faced with devastation of the natural processes that we've relied on for millenia (I.e. rising tide raises all boats). Sure, we have social media and iphones, but those don't feed and slake us, and the A/C bill is overdue. Cf. modern, independent (even 1st world modern) farmers' plight. It's not possible to make a go of it being a subsistence-type local producer. Someone will come in and undercut you with an ersatz product and financial/legal maneuvering. Aside from that, it's largely been proven that the hysteria surrounding birthrate and overpopulation is a red herring strongly advocated by industries trying to obfuscate the problem of climate change.
Proven 6y ago
That's not a problem. Imagine if everyone was running at the emissions level of the richest 1%. I don't care if each of them consumes 100x as much energy. But it'd be nice if Al Gore and di Caprio gave me less crap about how I live my life (and if the idiots from the media didn't give them as much coverage).
goodluckchuck 6y ago
Emissions of a city bus are more than double the emissions of a VW golf, but that doesn't mean mass-transit should be reduced.
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  The 1% don't improve the greater society like a city bus does
  - zalkota 6y ago
    How can you be sure of that? The 1% own airlines, cruise liners, factories that produce buses and cars, etc. The other 99% ride on those for enjoyment and business. The problem with your argument is that you somehow believe that the 1% is warming the planet and the only people benefiting are the 1%. This is your flaw. The 1% are rich because they add value to the other 99%. Without the 1%, you wouldn’t have air travel or buses!
    - newen 6y ago
      No, you would still have air travel and buses. They just wouldn't own it.
    - wyre 6y ago
      It’s 1% of the world. So incomes over $100k I think. This is a world issue. There are billions of people that have never flown on an airplane and probably billions of people that have never been in a bus. The 1% are largely the only people unaffected by climate change while it greatly effects communities in the global south.
      - collyw 6y ago
        top 1% of the world incomes only requires around $32,000. https://activerain.com/blogsview/5136164/are-you-in-the-top-1--in-the-world-- https://activerain.com/blogsview/5136164/are-you-in-the-top-...
    - 6y ago
aswag14 6y ago
This is just embarrassing. It basically assumes away the results. Methods: "We start with national consumption emissions data for 117 countries from 1990 to 2015 period. This reflects both the emissions produced in a country and those embedded in imports, while excluding those embedded in exports. We allocate national consumption emissions to individuals within each country based on a functional relationship between income and emissions, drawing on new income distribution datasets. We assume, based on numerous studies at national, regional and global levels, that emissions rise in proportion to income, above a minimum emissions floor and to a maximum emissions ceiling. These estimates of the consumption emissions of individuals in each country are then sorted into a global distribution according to income."
- scotty79 6y ago
  I think they assume that emissions are corrrlated with income which is well founded assumption and just do a bit of math over countries and income distributions to get a rough idea of how much richness of countries and individuals work in tandem to result in huge emissions inequality and polarisation.
serjester 6y ago
The study says 50% of the world still lives in 'extreme poverty' (< $5.50 / day). It seems the far better question is how do we improve the standard of living of these people in a sustainable fashion? The emissions of wealthy countries seems marginal in the longterm once the rest of the world gets plugged in. For example, while the US has technically cut down on it's emissions it's done this (in part) by largely exporting the coal it used to burn to China. On a per country basis this is great but obviously it doesn't solve the real problem. The Chinese want the same standard of living as Americans and American's taking less flights doesn't seem like a viable strategy. This is coming from someone that really cares about this but often resulting policies seem incredibly shortsighted in mitigating our worldwide, long term emissions. With that said, this study's methods are atrocious.
- ouid 6y ago
  There is nothing sustainable about the current situation, so it seems that this is not a "more important question" but rather a question that needs to be solved in parallel.
- ArkVark 6y ago
  You improve the standard of living for these people by making it culturally and technically acceptable and possible for them to have zero or one child, instead of six or seven. The few children that are born will receive much greater investment in their education and upbringing, and the gradually falling population in those regions will improve quality of life for everyone and reduce pressure on the environment.
- scotty79 6y ago
  1.3 billion people live in developed countries. Even if then rest of the world catches up I don't think calling developed countries emissions 'marginal' is warranted.
elindbe2 6y ago
Keep in mind if you have an income of more than ~$60k as a single person, you're in the global 1% by income. https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i Also keep in mind that if you give your income to poorer people they will likely spend it in a way that produces emissions. IMO your best bet would be to take cash out of the bank then shred it and bury it deep underground with a shovel (burning would produce CO2). Also, quit your job.

74 points by makerofspoons 6y ago

Does this follow zipf's law / Pareto principle, like in this vsauce video: https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE

wyre 6y ago
I didn’t read this article but a Guardian article about the same thing mentions the top 10% accounting for 52% of emissions. Bit more drastic than Pareto.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  By Pareto, I would expect the top 20% of the top 20% to be responsible for 80% of the top 20% outcomes (which are 80% of total). That would imply that the top 4% would account for 64% of outcome under discussion, which is much more drastic than the top 10% accounting for only 52% of total.

maerF0x0 6y ago

If we hold people accountable for their offspring then the poorest have orders of magnitude more heirs and thus should multiply their emissions. The choice to have (greater than replacement) children should be seen as an "emissions" or "income" choice for this kind of reporting, else it fails to capture the systemic externalities of their actual lifestyle. This, as i understand it, is a sort of form of The Repugnant conclusion: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ , whereby the choice to increase population is a choice to divide the resources amongst greater and greater people, resulting in a smaller share per person. I don't think the developed world, or the "1%" should be held accountable for these sorts of outcomes.

defterGoose 6y ago
If you hold people accountable for their heirs then you've introduced a recursion that makes it nigh-impossible to calculate the emissions of any group. In any case, the title figure is rather staggering, and means that the exponent on the 1% assures their heirs' level of consumption too. The only way to put blame on someone's shoulders is to assign it to those in decision-making positions, which, you guessed it, is overwhelmingly the 1%.
- maerF0x0 6y ago
  > those in decision-making positions How do the poor not have choices? They have a choice to have >replacement children or not. > you've introduced a recursion that makes it nigh-impossible to calculate the emissions of any group. If you assume those heirs will never hit a terminal at replacement birthrate, then there probably would need to be some weighting function that approaches 0 after many generations.
  - defterGoose 6y ago
    My point is that the set of choices available to the poorest among us is largely determined by the richest among us. The only way for the poor to improve their situation is by playing the game of consumptive behavior that has been laid before them by those in positions of power. Keep in mind that reproduction is a deep-seated biological drive and that the one factor strongly correlated with lower birthrates, education, is a scarce resource and one that is subject to all sorts of manipulation at many levels of governance. It's also somewhat-to-highly myopic to assume that relative wealth isn't an important factor in an era when humans are faced with devastation of the natural processes that we've relied on for millenia (I.e. rising tide raises all boats). Sure, we have social media and iphones, but those don't feed and slake us, and the A/C bill is overdue. Cf. modern, independent (even 1st world modern) farmers' plight. It's not possible to make a go of it being a subsistence-type local producer. Someone will come in and undercut you with an ersatz product and financial/legal maneuvering. Aside from that, it's largely been proven that the hysteria surrounding birthrate and overpopulation is a red herring strongly advocated by industries trying to obfuscate the problem of climate change.

Proven 6y ago

That's not a problem. Imagine if everyone was running at the emissions level of the richest 1%. I don't care if each of them consumes 100x as much energy. But it'd be nice if Al Gore and di Caprio gave me less crap about how I live my life (and if the idiots from the media didn't give them as much coverage).

goodluckchuck 6y ago

Emissions of a city bus are more than double the emissions of a VW golf, but that doesn't mean mass-transit should be reduced.

mrguyorama 6y ago
The 1% don't improve the greater society like a city bus does
- zalkota 6y ago
  How can you be sure of that? The 1% own airlines, cruise liners, factories that produce buses and cars, etc. The other 99% ride on those for enjoyment and business. The problem with your argument is that you somehow believe that the 1% is warming the planet and the only people benefiting are the 1%. This is your flaw. The 1% are rich because they add value to the other 99%. Without the 1%, you wouldn’t have air travel or buses!
  - newen 6y ago
    No, you would still have air travel and buses. They just wouldn't own it.
  - wyre 6y ago
    It’s 1% of the world. So incomes over $100k I think. This is a world issue. There are billions of people that have never flown on an airplane and probably billions of people that have never been in a bus. The 1% are largely the only people unaffected by climate change while it greatly effects communities in the global south.
    - collyw 6y ago
      top 1% of the world incomes only requires around $32,000. https://activerain.com/blogsview/5136164/are-you-in-the-top-1--in-the-world-- https://activerain.com/blogsview/5136164/are-you-in-the-top-...
  - 6y ago

aswag14 6y ago

This is just embarrassing. It basically assumes away the results. Methods: "We start with national consumption emissions data for 117 countries from 1990 to 2015 period. This reflects both the emissions produced in a country and those embedded in imports, while excluding those embedded in exports. We allocate national consumption emissions to individuals within each country based on a functional relationship between income and emissions, drawing on new income distribution datasets. We assume, based on numerous studies at national, regional and global levels, that emissions rise in proportion to income, above a minimum emissions floor and to a maximum emissions ceiling. These estimates of the consumption emissions of individuals in each country are then sorted into a global distribution according to income."

scotty79 6y ago
I think they assume that emissions are corrrlated with income which is well founded assumption and just do a bit of math over countries and income distributions to get a rough idea of how much richness of countries and individuals work in tandem to result in huge emissions inequality and polarisation.

serjester 6y ago

The study says 50% of the world still lives in 'extreme poverty' (< $5.50 / day). It seems the far better question is how do we improve the standard of living of these people in a sustainable fashion? The emissions of wealthy countries seems marginal in the longterm once the rest of the world gets plugged in. For example, while the US has technically cut down on it's emissions it's done this (in part) by largely exporting the coal it used to burn to China. On a per country basis this is great but obviously it doesn't solve the real problem. The Chinese want the same standard of living as Americans and American's taking less flights doesn't seem like a viable strategy. This is coming from someone that really cares about this but often resulting policies seem incredibly shortsighted in mitigating our worldwide, long term emissions. With that said, this study's methods are atrocious.

ouid 6y ago
There is nothing sustainable about the current situation, so it seems that this is not a "more important question" but rather a question that needs to be solved in parallel.
ArkVark 6y ago
You improve the standard of living for these people by making it culturally and technically acceptable and possible for them to have zero or one child, instead of six or seven. The few children that are born will receive much greater investment in their education and upbringing, and the gradually falling population in those regions will improve quality of life for everyone and reduce pressure on the environment.
scotty79 6y ago
1.3 billion people live in developed countries. Even if then rest of the world catches up I don't think calling developed countries emissions 'marginal' is warranted.

elindbe2 6y ago

Keep in mind if you have an income of more than ~$60k as a single person, you're in the global 1% by income. https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i Also keep in mind that if you give your income to poorer people they will likely spend it in a way that produces emissions. IMO your best bet would be to take cash out of the bank then shred it and bury it deep underground with a shovel (burning would produce CO2). Also, quit your job.