As the COP27 climate meeting is taking place in Egypt, an Oxfam report publishes a study on billionaires emissions. The results are staggering and scary.
What do 125 billionaires and the entire population of France, 67 million people, have in common? They emit the same amount of CO2 in the air.
This stunning and disturbing figure emerged from an Oxfam report about the carbon emission tonnage of the richest 10%. What they found is that a billionaire emits a million times more than an average person. A million times more. In one year.
Average emission by a billionaire is 3 million tonnes per year. This is the result of their luxurious and opulent lifestyle, with private jets, 20 meters yachts and luxury cars. But it is also the result of their personal investments. The Oxfam report shows that billionaires tend to fund companies with high carbon emissions rather than sustainable ones. Non-renewable industries like oil, for example, are usually supported by billionaires. This risks rendering efforts by governments, small businesses and average people to aim for a green society useless.
To put into perspective how big billionaire’s emissions are, it would take 4 million people going vegan every year to counter them. “It would take 1.8 million cows to emit the same levels of CO2 as each of the 125 billionaires,” the report concluded.
What can be done
The Oxfam report has been released as the COP27 meeting is taking place in Sharm-el-Sheikh. The conference, which started last Sunday, will focus on the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations.
Third world countries are bearing the brunt of the developed economies’ emissions, and the goal of COP27 is to establish a pool of funds to help. As many world leaders fly to Egypt, they will also face the realities of climate change, hence the choice of location for the COP27.
Nafkote Dabi of Oxfam International said that he hoped for government actions to stop billionaires’ emissions:
We need COP27 to expose and change the role that big corporates and their rich investors are playing in profiting from the pollution that is driving the global climate crisis. They can’t be allowed to hide or greenwash. We need governments to tackle this urgently by publishing emission figures for the richest people, regulating investors and corporates to slash carbon emissions and taxing wealth and polluting investments.
Oxfam called for COP27 leaders to implement a wealth tax all across the globe, which would raise billions and billions of dollars. Then, these new funds could go into financing renewable energies as well as sustainable industries.
The COP meeting has resulted many times in important decisions to tackle climate change on an international level. Perhaps this could be this year’s new objective, but challenging billionaire’s lobbying power will be difficult even for governments.
The Earth, however, does not have many other choices left.
