I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data.

I know it's super in vogue to hate the rich or whatever, but if we want to effectively fight climate change we have to do so strategically, supported by data. The data is pretty clear on this matter, the absolute priority is reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production, the second priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of cargo transport and agriculture, and the third priority should be reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing. Aligned to each of these is a consistent reduction in how much fossil fuels we extract, especially natural gas which due to pipeline leakage contributes a huge amount of methane into the atmosphere, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I am /very/ specifically not doing some sort of whataboutism based fingerpointing to things that affect the poor in order to defend the rich. I don't care about rich and poor, we're all human beings, and we're all currently headed towards an extinction level event for our entire species because people are distracted by stupid things that don't matter and ignoring the data. Your heart bleeding for the global poor is smoke and mirrors in the face of it all. We, as a species, cannot afford to bring everyone to the same standard of living that exists in the West today while combatting climate change. If we're being really blunt, the standard of living in the West must also be reduced. Perhaps if we ever completely get on renewable electricity production and find a way to turn excess energy into removing carbon from the atmosphere we can reassess what it takes to increase the global standard of living, but we're already fucked as it is just doing what we're already doing, expending more resources extracted from the earth to spew more waste into the atmosphere than we already are is an absolute non-starter.