Rich People Are Fueling the Climate Crisis – and Not Just by Their Consumption
The same study keeps coming out to show that the rich are causing climate change and environmental breakdown. In 2015, Oxfam released a reportentitled ‘Extreme Carbon Inequality’ that found the top 10% of people in the world are responsible for 50% of emissions, while the bottom 50% are only responsible for 10% That same year, economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel crunched the data to reveal similarly stark numbers: the “top 10% emitters contribute to 45% of global emissions.”
More recently, a wide-ranging scientific review argued that “consumption of affluent households worldwide is by far the strongest determinant and the strongest accelerator of increases of global environmental and social impacts.” And just last month, a new study found that the wealthy – who they identify as a “polluter elite” – are “at the heart of the climate problem.” The study recommends, “far reaching changes in lifestyles are also required if we are to avoid dangerous levels of global heating.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that those on the Left have seized on these studies as grist for the mill of class struggle. Here at Jacobin, this data has led to call-to-arms articles like “Only class war can stop climate change” and “To save the planet, expropriate the rich.”
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And now in 2021, 20 people own more than 50% of the entire planet.
This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal plutocracy on a burning Earth
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
The current political spectrum in New Zealand can not radically adapt fast enough to adopt the changes we must make if we are to survive the climate crisis. It will require a radical Political Movement that elects a Party to implement a radical Nationalistic agenda.
These pressures and changes will occur whether we want them or not.
2023 will be the first election when Gen X + Millennials will be a greater voting population than the Boomers.
An election changes a Government.
A revolution changes the State.
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Auckland Council declared a ‘Climate Emergency’ two years ago and still haven’t produced an action plan.
Some emergency!
It was a PR emergency, a fill in.
Barbarism is here. Socialism is overdue.
While I cannot dispute the wealth numbers i believe it is also true that there is less abject poverty than any time in history and less people are starving . There is still away to go but I am afraid there is truth in the old saying that the poor will always be with us as we can all be ly able to make bad choices.
Trev. Tell that to a starving kid and see if it fills his belly.
China over the last 40 years has lifted 700 million out of poverty..
Its a matter of who is running the country where many billions of “profit” sucked out of NZ each year to off shore investors.
Robertson had to give the banks 31 billion before he could announce the covid19 close down. Much of that money will not reach the street of NZ but bolsters the financial markets.
Now is the time councils are doing their ‘long-term planning’.
Whilst there is some slight acknowledgement that matters are not looking good on the climate front, councils are STILL generating garbage about the ‘need for economic growth’ and yet more bollocks about ‘sustainable development’, which is an oxymoron, of course.
As usual, the matter of where the energy necessary for continued operation of current systems will come from is completely ignored, as is the Ponzi nature of the financial system.
With the world in the early stages of Abrupt (and uncontrollable) Climate Change, with the energy system having peaked and in terminal decline, and with the Ponzi financial system on its last legs, I believe ALL the so-called plans of councils around the country will unravel very soon, possibly within the next financial year.
Without a doubt, councils will squander both the energy resources still available and the time still available before the meltdown in futile attempts to prop up business-as-usual, just as the LINO government is attempting to do.
When the shit starts to hit the fan then the blame game will be lead by the wealth that own and controls MSM.
Above a blogger hints the poor exist because of bad choices,
Poor guy has been well programmed.
China has a population reduction plan and by the look of trends they will have peak population this year. Intelligent reduction of population is by having fewer births.
Vietnam also has a population plan but it hasn’t been on track long. It has taken years since the American War on Vietnam to rebuild infrastructure and tend to the matters of being carpet bombed, liberally treated to Napalm, agent orange with its DNA damage and re-establishing agriculture from minefields.
The USA was/is a prolific killing machine.
And there is the problem. Haters promoting the hate of another generation can only lead to more hate. Hitler knew that and Gobels and Himmler took that to the next level.
NZ’s home-baked Neo-Nazi fascist era isn’t ‘kool’. Cut that shit out!
Sadly a change of govt doesn’t seem to make much difference. If the oligarchs pull the strings. Vote with your feet, time and money. Young people get off YouTube and tick tock and disconnect from that matrix as much as possible. Move away from the cities if you can and experience rural or small town living.. or reconnect to that life if you grew up small town. Don’t buy the coffin apartment in the city. If you can afford to buy a small parcel of land and can grow a garden and have chooks, plant trees etc. Find partner with similar values or get them turned on to that. Have a hobby or pet. Join a library. Buy local. Meet friends for coffee and chat in person.. things you discuss aren’t being monitored and advertised back to you or sold to 3rd parties. It’s the little things..
All that socialism needs is a declaration of the necessary war government, as per WW 2.
Always enjoy your poetry of truth. Infuses me.
Collapse-trap. The species. Trez amusing, the people willing to sacrifice their children and grandchildren for their self-serving ‘ideas’. You and I don’t even have children but we care about them more than their parents. Quite the right end to the , now definitively known, ‘rationalising’ species.
Long live the wealthy in such case, lets wipe out this corrupted species once and for all, for all the women and different “not-normal” people that died in a system that doesn’t evolve, if omnicide means they will pay, so be it, long live self destruction, bring down false utopias, extremist
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