Oxfam International found that global billionaires—with their
superyachts, private jets, and investments—emit more carbon pollution in
90 minutes of their lives than the average person does in a lifetime.
The math here is the sort of thing that drives apathy for me to make small incremental changes. If the superrich can dump ~250 avg. emission years over the course of a year, why should I do anything besides lobby against this mode of transport or other large consumers? Maybe it’s a “spirit of the thing,” but changes in my life seem so negligible compared to how ruinous some individuals are acting.
There are 801 billionaires in the US out of about 335,893,238 people. If everyone else were to reduce their carbon footprint by even a tenth of a percent then there would be significantly less carbon in the atmosphere than if every billionaire in the US were to reduce their carbon footprint to zero.
This is also assuming that the 300+ million Americans have the same size carbon footprint, which is probably not true if you think about it for more than a second. I doubt the bottom 60% of earners in the country have the purchasing power to create that much waste through excess consumerism at this point.
Most of those “Shein/Temu/Aliexpress” hauls or 10x vacations across the world in a year you see on social media are not done by middle or lower income people/families.
Sure, but the individual contribution vs. companies / state-owned organizations is like 70% come from 100 companies / orgs. So the individual percentage is still negligible.
I’m not disagreeing with the math. I’m saying when you want to make changes, you start with the most meaningful funnel. If you have 2 factors contributing to a problem, factor 1 contributes 70%, factor 2 contributes 30%, going after factor 2 seems like a waste of time. 1%s contribute 1000x the amount of the average. Who should be making lifestyle changes here?
The math here is the sort of thing that drives apathy for me to make small incremental changes. If the superrich can dump ~250 avg. emission years over the course of a year, why should I do anything besides lobby against this mode of transport or other large consumers? Maybe it’s a “spirit of the thing,” but changes in my life seem so negligible compared to how ruinous some individuals are acting.
There are 801 billionaires in the US out of about 335,893,238 people. If everyone else were to reduce their carbon footprint by even a tenth of a percent then there would be significantly less carbon in the atmosphere than if every billionaire in the US were to reduce their carbon footprint to zero.
This is also assuming that the 300+ million Americans have the same size carbon footprint, which is probably not true if you think about it for more than a second. I doubt the bottom 60% of earners in the country have the purchasing power to create that much waste through excess consumerism at this point.
Most of those “Shein/Temu/Aliexpress” hauls or 10x vacations across the world in a year you see on social media are not done by middle or lower income people/families.
This is very much a top heavy issue.
Sure, but the individual contribution vs. companies / state-owned organizations is like 70% come from 100 companies / orgs. So the individual percentage is still negligible.
I’m not disagreeing with the math. I’m saying when you want to make changes, you start with the most meaningful funnel. If you have 2 factors contributing to a problem, factor 1 contributes 70%, factor 2 contributes 30%, going after factor 2 seems like a waste of time. 1%s contribute 1000x the amount of the average. Who should be making lifestyle changes here?
#voidscreaming
I can’t get 3 people to agree on lunch. No way are we goi g to all agree on carbon footprint reduction actions.
It’s easier to stop 801 people vs 335 million.