11 ms·

Americas richest 10% is responsible for 40% of its planet heating pollution

168 points by nithinj 3y ago

alexnewman 3y ago
Uhm, no. Current, America isn’t even responsible for 40% of the planet’s warming. Therefore, 10% of America cannot be responsible for 40%. I assume they mean 10% of america is responsible is for 40% of america’s planet heating. Which is of no surprise.
- footy 3y ago
  Yes, that's obviously what they mean. The pronoun "its" is modifying "America".
- gaadd33 3y ago
  English isn't your native language is it? The it's refers to America's warming. English isn't simple so it's an understandable mistake to make.
  - jezovuk 3y ago
    it's -> its
    - alexnewman 3y ago
      I am American and I read it wrong first, I asked 10 people, all Americans they all misunderstood the title.
readthenotes1 3y ago
The premise seems absurd: by owning stocks in companies that create pollution, the rich are responsible for said pollution but not the people who consume the companies' products. I was hoping for a tally of extensive air travel, multiple homes, helicoptering in and out of burning Man, and similar follies.
- M1ch431 3y ago
  If you are not an active investor in any shape or form - e.g. shaping the company/suggesting how things could be more sustainable, then you're just in it for the money/playing a game. You're not an active participant functionally in society - as a shareholder/investor I'm pretty sure you can directly influence company policy if you extend yourself. You may not be able to dictate it if you do not have decision-making power, but nevertheless your words would most likely be more valued than the average person's. People are assaulted by ad campaigns. Advertisement companies and corporations have subverted or even hacked the average person's brain - you are convinced in 50+ different directions to buy X product, get the latest version, or get a new subscription. It's easy to depend on corporations to solve all your problems. It's a carefully crafted dopamine rush; seeing the ad(s), buying the product, using unsustainable services like Amazon or even the major shipping companies to ship your item from wherever with copious amounts of emissions. Do the people want a new iPhone every year? Well, even if they didn't, they are coerced to upgrade by the cellular phone companies (who probably recycle to some degree if you trade-in, but I digress). Or - they are convinced by Apple themselves - which is some sort of cult in its own right. Planned obsolescence should be illegal, and I'm sure these mostly wasteful practices are not necessary in the grand scheme of things. Apple has done a lot of harmful things to the phone to perpetuate this business model: removing the ability to easily replace the battery as a consumer/non-licensed repairman (which is probably a major cause of failure/new phone purchases) and AFAIK not allowing aftermarket/third-party components with a DRM restriction (e.g. screens). Why get your phone repaired (or mess around with their self-repair kit) when you can get yet another phone that was senselessly made because one thing got a little better. I wonder how many phones exist currently in the United States vs. our population. Something to look into I suppose. But regardless, the biggest sickness (in my mind) of the US with how we do business is the fact that we choose to clog the highways with trucks loaded to the brim/airplanes to ship products domestically/commercially. I'm only a layman, but I can't imagine that's an efficient use of energy when compared to alternatives like high speed rail - which is something we absolutely need to consider investing in as a society if we ever want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. For transportation we need to consider this, and most assuredly for freight. If we could lay rail way back then; we can now + we can 1) plan it exponentially better with many technology advancements 2) fully power these services with renewable energy. The best I can do as a non-investor, as somebody who has little resources/no clout, is this post right here. In a world of unelected corporations (read: anti-competitive monopolies) who essentially govern over me (legalized bribery/lobbying), rape the environment and make people dependent on them, and nobody in "power" is truly playing hardball with them and their unlimited greed -- I'm pretty helpless to do anything, but go with the flow (besides, though very unlikely, get filthy rich from a lottery ticket and emulate Musk). That's what the average American does, even the average voter who votes blue. If you have money, you can effect change. If you know people with money, you can effect change.
thereisnospork 3y ago
Of course the top percentage has a higher per capital footprint? Most economic activity[0] distills down to energy expenditure, and therefore emissions. [0]Which the wealthy do more of by definition.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  Some richer people buy carbon offsets or products from companies that claim to be zero emissions, and such. These things are expensive and so much more affordable for the wealthy. It could easily be the top 0.00001% entirely offset their emissions impact -- but probably they'd still have more externalised impact in other things, micro plastics, resource wastage, ... It's not essential that the rich have a greater impact. Similarly, rich nations are in a better position to take action.
atleastoptimal 3y ago
Honestly lower than I thought, given that the top 10% own 100% of America's private jets and luxury yachts
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tinco 3y ago
  Do you think that private jets and yachts are a significant portion of CO2? First of all, such things are of the top 0.1%, not the 10%. You need to be thinking of more mundane things. As someone on this forum you very likely belong to the top 10%. How often do you order on Amazon? How often do you dine out? Do you have a heated pool? How often do you fly? How often do you eat beef or pork? How long is your daily commute? Those are the sort of things that influence your CO2 expenditure. Sure you could 10x that with flying private jets, but almost no one does that so it's not as significant.
  - pydry 3y ago
    It's not almost no one. When my boss's boss's boss spends 4 hours on a private jet he creates as much CO2 as I do in a year. I need a house. He doesnt need a jet. His jet should be banned yesterday.
    - jl6 3y ago
      The point being that even though your boss’s boss’s boss has an outsize impact, there aren’t many people like him, whereas there are millions of people like you, so in absolute terms “your” emissions matter too.
      - ffhhttt 3y ago
        So the societal cost of banning private jets is approximately zero? Why is it even worth discussing then?
        3y ago
WeylandYutani 3y ago
A lot of progressives are angry at the cheap plastic crap that Action sells but they conveniently forget that poor people don't scuba dive in the Carribbean much.
- ed_mercer 3y ago
  Not sure what your argument is. Is it that rich people do and therefore cause more plastic waste?
  - lionkor 3y ago
    probably yeah, and it makes sense as long as you stay in the bubble of thinking that your plastic trash doesn't get shipped to some place to be dumped and forgotten ... close to the ocean
  - xctr94 3y ago
    The argument is that we’re going after the wrong things, usually. Of course we want to improve things across all vectors, but we’ve been disproportionately asking the lower and middle classes to make sacrifices; and have been too lenient with corporations and the ultra-rich. Most pollution isn’t caused directly by the things we’ve been fighting.
    - timeon 3y ago
      So you thing that `progressives` are going just after these things? There are many comments in this thread that are just blame shifting from one side to another. That is why there is not going to be done anything about it. There is always someone else to blame.
- timeon 3y ago
  No this is just straw-man. If someone is caring for one thing it does not mean they do not care about other.
peepeepoopoo37 3y ago
[flagged]
wtcactus 3y ago
This is a ridiculous hammering of numbers, designed to pass some ideological message totally devoid of any root in reality. USA total CO2 emissions are less than 14% of global emissions. You aren't doing the environment any favors by pretending that it's by targeting a subset of US population, that you are going to change anything relevant on global emissions.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Meanwhile, the private jets continue to fly, and the little people think 'well, there's no way I'm giving up my car/meat/heating/AC while the elite are still globetrotting via private jets and superyachts', and our leaders still refuse to set a half-decent example.
  - wtcactus 3y ago
    It's a great thing the "little people" don't give up on their car/meat/heating/AC. Forcing anyone to give up on any of those - either by direct prohibition or taxation - its a totalitarian move.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      When the irresistible force meets the unmovable object something will have to give. Cars, meat, heating and AC are not rights, and banning them - at at least moderating them within reason - is not totalitarian. And when it comes to the difference between living and at least cars and meat it's actually not such a hard choice. Heating and AC are more complex: those can be life savers, especially when the climate gets more extreme. But there are other options: migrate to places where it isn't that hot or cold. And that's where we have a nice little feedback loop: on account of climate change the temperate zone where you are not expected to require much heating or much cooling is shrinking so you'll need more heating and more AC which will cause more energy to be pumped into the atmosphere. Those 'little people' are still by and large the richest fraction of the world population (they have cars, eat meat, have heated houses and AC). It's the real poor who pay the price for all this.
andrewstuart 3y ago
Nothing can be done. Greed and self interest trumps all.
Synaesthesia 3y ago
When I watched this TV show where real estate agents were selling massive houses to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills, expansive multi-million dollar homes, I just though of all the concrete and materials used to build such homes (all of which emit CO2 when made) and the heating and cooling bills associated with that. It's all unnecessary stuff, you don't need a collosal mansion, that's the sort of thing which contributes to these figures. Their extremely vapid, "luxurious" lives ... It's sad
- somedude895 3y ago
  The lifestyle of the rich is a drop in the bucket and not what the article is about. Since when did HN get so envy-driven?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  No one needs detached single family homes with garages and individual cars and vacations to the beach either. A family of 6 living in a single room could be thinking the same watching Home Improvement.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Waste is a well defined concept to most people - if you have several houses and sevrral cars that you cannot possibly use most of the year, thats a waste.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      And what are people doing in detached homes that they cannot be doing in dense multifamily housing? Space itself is a luxury (it has a knock on effect of increasing the distance everything within and around that space has to travel). I might define multiple unused houses as not being a waste just like someone with multiple unused bedrooms defines it as not being waste. A “spare” house and an “spare” bedroom. And vice versa.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
super256 3y ago
If I am understanding correctly, this is a very dishonest study: If Elon Musk owns 30% of Tesla, and Tesla produces 1 Gigaton of CO2 each year the study would assign 300 Megatons to Musk, even though the cars are produced for someone else(!).
tarcar 3y ago
The title is editorialized, the original title is "Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance" and the abstract says "In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households".
- somedude895 3y ago
  "associated with income flows" Yeah so the editorialized title is ignorant at best and deliberately misleading at worst. I've flagged it.
- refurb 3y ago
  I mean that seems entirely intuitive. Most income flows involve emissions. So the highest income have the highest emissions from income flows. Did the authors somehow think this wasn’t true?
  - suckitsam 3y ago
    "Top X% of earners/producers responsible for the top Y% of production/expenditures/consumption" is a whole genre. It's great because the top 10% are bad and the rest of us are good. I'll hide under my bed (where I recycle my straw wrappers) if you show me global numbers.
xnx 3y ago
If wealth was redistributed, so would pollution. There are a lot of good reasons for wealth distribution (or to prevent its accumulation), but preventing pollution isn't one of them.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > If wealth was redistributed, so would pollution. If wealth was redistributed, some people would be able to start affording rent and groceries (instead of have to choose one or the other): they would not necessarily be able to start flying on private jets. If wealth was redistributed, some folks may be able to afford to buy a newer more fuel efficient car (or hybrid/EV) instead of limping along in their 2004 Chevy.
Qiu_Zhanxuan 3y ago
"The american way of life is non-negotiable" George H.W. Bush To be honest, America decided long ago the rest of the world would suffer as long as America could afford it.
oooyay 3y ago
The line about judging investments purely from a holding standpoint is kinda fraught and I'm surprised to see it so confidently printed. What the authors are appealing to is the E in ESG investing. Freakonomics recently did a great interview with Kelly Shue about the effects of ESG investing and viable counter examples like Engine Number 1: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-e-s-g-investors-actually-helping-the-environment/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-e-s-g-investors-actuall... The gist of the study that Kelly performed showed that many, if not most, companies with good E values are companies who never had environmental impact in the first place. They exist in well trodden spaces whose biggest impacts were office space and data centers. The net action of divesture causes less money available to be able to innovate, doesn't provide the kind of momentum an activist investor like Engine Number 1 can, and works by proliferating the idea that change can be claimed by effectively ignoring that problematic companies exist and will continue to exist. The last bit, for those unaware, comes from the fact that even if all cars today were made fully electric there is still a huge line of demand for essential products, like fertilizer, that include oil derivatives. My point more broadly being in order to judge consumers you can't just look at holdings, you need to see what they're materially supporting. If they materially support the indefinite expansion of oil extraction and not trying to innovate away from oil then they're doing harm. Simply investing in a company is not indication of how an investor would vote when presented an opportunity to change the company direction by a group of activists. Engine Number 1 did exactly this with Exxon and shareholders voted as I described.

168 points by nithinj 3y ago

Uhm, no. Current, America isn’t even responsible for 40% of the planet’s warming. Therefore, 10% of America cannot be responsible for 40%. I assume they mean 10% of america is responsible is for 40% of america’s planet heating. Which is of no surprise.

footy 3y ago
Yes, that's obviously what they mean. The pronoun "its" is modifying "America".
gaadd33 3y ago
English isn't your native language is it? The it's refers to America's warming. English isn't simple so it's an understandable mistake to make.
- jezovuk 3y ago
  it's -> its
  - alexnewman 3y ago
    I am American and I read it wrong first, I asked 10 people, all Americans they all misunderstood the title.

readthenotes1 3y ago

The premise seems absurd: by owning stocks in companies that create pollution, the rich are responsible for said pollution but not the people who consume the companies' products. I was hoping for a tally of extensive air travel, multiple homes, helicoptering in and out of burning Man, and similar follies.

M1ch431 3y ago
If you are not an active investor in any shape or form - e.g. shaping the company/suggesting how things could be more sustainable, then you're just in it for the money/playing a game. You're not an active participant functionally in society - as a shareholder/investor I'm pretty sure you can directly influence company policy if you extend yourself. You may not be able to dictate it if you do not have decision-making power, but nevertheless your words would most likely be more valued than the average person's. People are assaulted by ad campaigns. Advertisement companies and corporations have subverted or even hacked the average person's brain - you are convinced in 50+ different directions to buy X product, get the latest version, or get a new subscription. It's easy to depend on corporations to solve all your problems. It's a carefully crafted dopamine rush; seeing the ad(s), buying the product, using unsustainable services like Amazon or even the major shipping companies to ship your item from wherever with copious amounts of emissions. Do the people want a new iPhone every year? Well, even if they didn't, they are coerced to upgrade by the cellular phone companies (who probably recycle to some degree if you trade-in, but I digress). Or - they are convinced by Apple themselves - which is some sort of cult in its own right. Planned obsolescence should be illegal, and I'm sure these mostly wasteful practices are not necessary in the grand scheme of things. Apple has done a lot of harmful things to the phone to perpetuate this business model: removing the ability to easily replace the battery as a consumer/non-licensed repairman (which is probably a major cause of failure/new phone purchases) and AFAIK not allowing aftermarket/third-party components with a DRM restriction (e.g. screens). Why get your phone repaired (or mess around with their self-repair kit) when you can get yet another phone that was senselessly made because one thing got a little better. I wonder how many phones exist currently in the United States vs. our population. Something to look into I suppose. But regardless, the biggest sickness (in my mind) of the US with how we do business is the fact that we choose to clog the highways with trucks loaded to the brim/airplanes to ship products domestically/commercially. I'm only a layman, but I can't imagine that's an efficient use of energy when compared to alternatives like high speed rail - which is something we absolutely need to consider investing in as a society if we ever want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. For transportation we need to consider this, and most assuredly for freight. If we could lay rail way back then; we can now + we can 1) plan it exponentially better with many technology advancements 2) fully power these services with renewable energy. The best I can do as a non-investor, as somebody who has little resources/no clout, is this post right here. In a world of unelected corporations (read: anti-competitive monopolies) who essentially govern over me (legalized bribery/lobbying), rape the environment and make people dependent on them, and nobody in "power" is truly playing hardball with them and their unlimited greed -- I'm pretty helpless to do anything, but go with the flow (besides, though very unlikely, get filthy rich from a lottery ticket and emulate Musk). That's what the average American does, even the average voter who votes blue. If you have money, you can effect change. If you know people with money, you can effect change.

thereisnospork 3y ago

Of course the top percentage has a higher per capital footprint? Most economic activity[0] distills down to energy expenditure, and therefore emissions. [0]Which the wealthy do more of by definition.

pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Some richer people buy carbon offsets or products from companies that claim to be zero emissions, and such. These things are expensive and so much more affordable for the wealthy. It could easily be the top 0.00001% entirely offset their emissions impact -- but probably they'd still have more externalised impact in other things, micro plastics, resource wastage, ... It's not essential that the rich have a greater impact. Similarly, rich nations are in a better position to take action.

atleastoptimal 3y ago

Honestly lower than I thought, given that the top 10% own 100% of America's private jets and luxury yachts

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tinco 3y ago
Do you think that private jets and yachts are a significant portion of CO2? First of all, such things are of the top 0.1%, not the 10%. You need to be thinking of more mundane things. As someone on this forum you very likely belong to the top 10%. How often do you order on Amazon? How often do you dine out? Do you have a heated pool? How often do you fly? How often do you eat beef or pork? How long is your daily commute? Those are the sort of things that influence your CO2 expenditure. Sure you could 10x that with flying private jets, but almost no one does that so it's not as significant.
- pydry 3y ago
  It's not almost no one. When my boss's boss's boss spends 4 hours on a private jet he creates as much CO2 as I do in a year. I need a house. He doesnt need a jet. His jet should be banned yesterday.
  - jl6 3y ago
    The point being that even though your boss’s boss’s boss has an outsize impact, there aren’t many people like him, whereas there are millions of people like you, so in absolute terms “your” emissions matter too.
    - ffhhttt 3y ago
      So the societal cost of banning private jets is approximately zero? Why is it even worth discussing then?
      - 3y ago

WeylandYutani 3y ago

A lot of progressives are angry at the cheap plastic crap that Action sells but they conveniently forget that poor people don't scuba dive in the Carribbean much.

ed_mercer 3y ago
Not sure what your argument is. Is it that rich people do and therefore cause more plastic waste?
- lionkor 3y ago
  probably yeah, and it makes sense as long as you stay in the bubble of thinking that your plastic trash doesn't get shipped to some place to be dumped and forgotten ... close to the ocean
- xctr94 3y ago
  The argument is that we’re going after the wrong things, usually. Of course we want to improve things across all vectors, but we’ve been disproportionately asking the lower and middle classes to make sacrifices; and have been too lenient with corporations and the ultra-rich. Most pollution isn’t caused directly by the things we’ve been fighting.
  - timeon 3y ago
    So you thing that `progressives` are going just after these things? There are many comments in this thread that are just blame shifting from one side to another. That is why there is not going to be done anything about it. There is always someone else to blame.
timeon 3y ago
No this is just straw-man. If someone is caring for one thing it does not mean they do not care about other.

peepeepoopoo37 3y ago

[flagged]

wtcactus 3y ago

This is a ridiculous hammering of numbers, designed to pass some ideological message totally devoid of any root in reality. USA total CO2 emissions are less than 14% of global emissions. You aren't doing the environment any favors by pretending that it's by targeting a subset of US population, that you are going to change anything relevant on global emissions.

bluescrn 3y ago
Meanwhile, the private jets continue to fly, and the little people think 'well, there's no way I'm giving up my car/meat/heating/AC while the elite are still globetrotting via private jets and superyachts', and our leaders still refuse to set a half-decent example.
- wtcactus 3y ago
  It's a great thing the "little people" don't give up on their car/meat/heating/AC. Forcing anyone to give up on any of those - either by direct prohibition or taxation - its a totalitarian move.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    When the irresistible force meets the unmovable object something will have to give. Cars, meat, heating and AC are not rights, and banning them - at at least moderating them within reason - is not totalitarian. And when it comes to the difference between living and at least cars and meat it's actually not such a hard choice. Heating and AC are more complex: those can be life savers, especially when the climate gets more extreme. But there are other options: migrate to places where it isn't that hot or cold. And that's where we have a nice little feedback loop: on account of climate change the temperate zone where you are not expected to require much heating or much cooling is shrinking so you'll need more heating and more AC which will cause more energy to be pumped into the atmosphere. Those 'little people' are still by and large the richest fraction of the world population (they have cars, eat meat, have heated houses and AC). It's the real poor who pay the price for all this.

andrewstuart 3y ago

Nothing can be done. Greed and self interest trumps all.

Synaesthesia 3y ago

When I watched this TV show where real estate agents were selling massive houses to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills, expansive multi-million dollar homes, I just though of all the concrete and materials used to build such homes (all of which emit CO2 when made) and the heating and cooling bills associated with that. It's all unnecessary stuff, you don't need a collosal mansion, that's the sort of thing which contributes to these figures. Their extremely vapid, "luxurious" lives ... It's sad

somedude895 3y ago
The lifestyle of the rich is a drop in the bucket and not what the article is about. Since when did HN get so envy-driven?
lotsofpulp 3y ago
No one needs detached single family homes with garages and individual cars and vacations to the beach either. A family of 6 living in a single room could be thinking the same watching Home Improvement.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Waste is a well defined concept to most people - if you have several houses and sevrral cars that you cannot possibly use most of the year, thats a waste.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    And what are people doing in detached homes that they cannot be doing in dense multifamily housing? Space itself is a luxury (it has a knock on effect of increasing the distance everything within and around that space has to travel). I might define multiple unused houses as not being a waste just like someone with multiple unused bedrooms defines it as not being waste. A “spare” house and an “spare” bedroom. And vice versa.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

super256 3y ago

If I am understanding correctly, this is a very dishonest study: If Elon Musk owns 30% of Tesla, and Tesla produces 1 Gigaton of CO2 each year the study would assign 300 Megatons to Musk, even though the cars are produced for someone else(!).

tarcar 3y ago

The title is editorialized, the original title is "Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance" and the abstract says "In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households".

somedude895 3y ago
"associated with income flows" Yeah so the editorialized title is ignorant at best and deliberately misleading at worst. I've flagged it.
refurb 3y ago
I mean that seems entirely intuitive. Most income flows involve emissions. So the highest income have the highest emissions from income flows. Did the authors somehow think this wasn’t true?
- suckitsam 3y ago
  "Top X% of earners/producers responsible for the top Y% of production/expenditures/consumption" is a whole genre. It's great because the top 10% are bad and the rest of us are good. I'll hide under my bed (where I recycle my straw wrappers) if you show me global numbers.

xnx 3y ago

If wealth was redistributed, so would pollution. There are a lot of good reasons for wealth distribution (or to prevent its accumulation), but preventing pollution isn't one of them.

throw0101b 3y ago
> If wealth was redistributed, so would pollution. If wealth was redistributed, some people would be able to start affording rent and groceries (instead of have to choose one or the other): they would not necessarily be able to start flying on private jets. If wealth was redistributed, some folks may be able to afford to buy a newer more fuel efficient car (or hybrid/EV) instead of limping along in their 2004 Chevy.

Qiu_Zhanxuan 3y ago

"The american way of life is non-negotiable" George H.W. Bush To be honest, America decided long ago the rest of the world would suffer as long as America could afford it.

oooyay 3y ago

The line about judging investments purely from a holding standpoint is kinda fraught and I'm surprised to see it so confidently printed. What the authors are appealing to is the E in ESG investing. Freakonomics recently did a great interview with Kelly Shue about the effects of ESG investing and viable counter examples like Engine Number 1: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-e-s-g-investors-actually-helping-the-environment/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-e-s-g-investors-actuall... The gist of the study that Kelly performed showed that many, if not most, companies with good E values are companies who never had environmental impact in the first place. They exist in well trodden spaces whose biggest impacts were office space and data centers. The net action of divesture causes less money available to be able to innovate, doesn't provide the kind of momentum an activist investor like Engine Number 1 can, and works by proliferating the idea that change can be claimed by effectively ignoring that problematic companies exist and will continue to exist. The last bit, for those unaware, comes from the fact that even if all cars today were made fully electric there is still a huge line of demand for essential products, like fertilizer, that include oil derivatives. My point more broadly being in order to judge consumers you can't just look at holdings, you need to see what they're materially supporting. If they materially support the indefinite expansion of oil extraction and not trying to innovate away from oil then they're doing harm. Simply investing in a company is not indication of how an investor would vote when presented an opportunity to change the company direction by a group of activists. Engine Number 1 did exactly this with Exxon and shareholders voted as I described.