Tax the rich before they kill us all
A new OXFAM report finds that the richest 1% of the world’s population is responsible for as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.
This Instagram post from a couple of years ago caused enough embarrassment that it was taken down after 8.3 million views, but it could have been on the cover of the new Oxfam report Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%. It starts with a stern Greta Thunberg writing in the forward:
“The richest 1% of the world’s population are responsible for as much carbon pollution as the people who make up the poorest two-thirds of humanity. They have stolen our planet’s resources to fuel their lavish lifestyles. A short trip on a private jet will produce more carbon than the average person emits all year. They are sacrificing us at the altar of their greed. This report reveals a perverse reality: those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are the ones who are suffering the most. And those who have done the most will likely suffer the least.”
In my previous writing, I did not worry much about the 1%, with their production of 16% of carbon emissions, as I was about the top 10%, who are responsible for fully 50% of the carbon emissions. I thought the private jets and yachts of the super-rich were ostentatious and emitted a lot of carbon, with some very rich yacht owners at 3,000 tonnes per year when the Canadian average is around 18, but there weren’t that many of them- only 7,700 worldwide, with a total annual output of 1.7 gigatonnes of CO2, while the top 10% pumped out 18.5 gigatonnes. But many average North Americans are in that 10% and can find it hard to cut their footprint significantly; it costs serious money to change to electric cars or heat pumps. Many live in places where it’s hard to get around without a car. But as the report notes,
“Cutting emissions is easier the richer you are. The majority of carbon emissions of the super-rich come from luxury goods and services and from their investments, so they have far greater capacity to make the deep and immediate cuts we need to stay below 1.5°C. No one needs, for example, frequent air travel, private jets or yachts, multiple multimillion-dollar mansions or fleets of high-end gas-guzzling cars. With one call to their stockbroker, a billionaire investor can easily shift their money away from fossil fuels into green energy.”
I found when I wrote my book, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle, that cutting out red meat and making little lifestyle changes was one thing, but the only reason I could actually pull it off and cut my carbon footprint so much was that I had the money to live in a walkable neighbourhood close to everything. I could e-bike everywhere, renovate my house into two apartments so that we were consuming half the utilities, and I had a cushy work-from-home job. It’s definitely easier when you have money. Richer people can afford big Passivhaus homes with Teslas in the driveway.
Oxfam wants to make the rich pay, calculating that a 60% tax on the income of the top 1% of earners (average income: US$310,000) would generate US$6.4 trillion per year that could be shipped south.
“Trillions of dollars of this new tax revenue must flow to the Global South to fund a rapid and just energy transition, support communities to protect themselves from climate change and to provide compensation for the loss and damage caused by climate breakdown. It must be used to cancel crippling debts, help rapidly reduce inequality, end poverty and deliver prosperity for all.”
They make the point that high taxes lead to greater economic equality, better public services, and “deliver high levels of well-being for less cost and far lower carbon impact.” Anyone who has been to Denmark (top tax rate: 55.9%) will see how well this works.
The economist Thomas Piketty tells the Guardian that the carbon inequality gap is a serious problem. “Poorly targeted policies on energy around the world place a greater burden on poor people, for whom energy, food and housing take up far larger shares of household budgets than for the well-off.” This is provoking a backlash, according to Piketty. He recalled the yellow vest protests in France, where people on low incomes were paying more for gasoline while the rich carried on as usual.
“Everybody now understands that everybody would have to make some effort [to cut emissions], it’s not going to be only the rich. But this effort has to be distributed in a way that can be accepted by the population. If you don’t address this, we are going to have a gigantic yellow vest movement everywhere. And that’s a little bit what we have.”
Indeed, we are seeing this in Canada right now. Perhaps our carbon tax should have been progressive, like our income tax. Piketty suggests a basic emissions allowance covering ordinary needs, “but activities beyond that – such as frequent holiday flights, large houses or large vehicles – would be taxed by larger increments, so that the most polluting activities were subject to “an enormous tax rate…You have to start right at the very top, [with] people who would take a private jet.”
Private jets piss everyone off since they are signs of extremely conspicuous consumption, and a very big portion of that giant carbon footprint of the very rich is from flying. Nothing will ever be done about them in Canada because Bombardier, which used to make streetcars and fast trains, got rid of everything except its private jet biz. Alberta is oil, and Quebec is Bombardier, and that’s why we are so fucked.
It’s not just Piketty. Jason Hickel, the degrowther and author of “Less is More,” complains about the “polluter elite” in the Guardian:
“We have to think about the rich in terms of how much they are depleting the remaining carbon budget. Right now, millionaires alone are on track to burn 72% of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C. The purchasing power of the very rich needs to be curtailed. We are devoting huge amounts of energy to facilitate the excess consumption of the ruling class – in the midst of a climate emergency, that is totally irrational.”
But how do we deal with the 1%? They own the media, they own the government, and they control the discourse. Climate scientist Kevin Anderson describes the problem:
“The 1% group use their hugely disproportionate power to manipulate social aspirations and the narratives around climate change. These extend from highly funded programmes of lying and advertising to proposing pseudo-technical solutions, from the financialisation of carbon to labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power. Such a dangerous framing is compounded by a typically supine media owned or controlled by the 1%. The tendrils of the 1% have twisted society into something deeply self-destructive.”
Yesterday morning, I watched a fascinating discussion on dealing with Canada’s energy transition, and closing the oil sands or Bombardier didn’t come up. Abatement, carbon capture and storage, small modular reactors, and even hydrogen did. After a week of reading the Guardian on the Great Carbon Divide, I really felt like I was on a different planet, or at least another country.
I have written previously that abatement and carbon capture are predatory delaying tactics to keep doing business as usual, and have written two books about reducing the emissions of the 10%. But OXFAM and Piketty make a good point: The 1%, the very rich, consume the most, emit the most, and are a juicy target.
And on this Black Friday, I also recommend Kate Soper on how Consumerism is the path to planetary ruin, but there are other ways to live.