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These men are some of the biggest polluters on the planet. Take a guess how much they emit. In 2018, the average Indian emitted two tons of planet-heating gases. The average American emitted 15 tons. Here's how much Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich emitted. Welcome! To the filthy lives of the ultra-rich. This is a world of helicopters, jets, mansions and rockets. Cutting these people's emissions is the easiest win for the climate.
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It comes at zero cost to anyone except them. And, well, they can afford it. So just how dirty are the world's richest people? And how do we clean them up? Answering the first question is tricky because nobody is forced to report their own emissions. Scientists take estimates of the carbon pollution from an activity or product and combine them with data about how often you do or buy it. That's hard enough to get right for yourself. But...
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"When it comes to billionaires, this is even harder because you don't have that much information about them." This is Beatriz Barros, a researcher who worked out the carbon footprints of 20 billionaires in 2018. "We had to work with what we had. We had to work with billionaires whose lifestyle is glamorized, who often appear in the media,
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who show off their yachts, their private jets." That meant they ignored some of the richest people in Asia. But in Europe and the US they found plenty of material to keep them busy. Take Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, steel magnate and former football club owner. His 162-meter-long yacht has two helipads and – kinda unnecessarily for a boat – two swimming pools.
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Powering this single ship with diesel makes up the bulk of his colossal carbon footprint. And at 31,000 tons that's more pollution than an island nation of 11,000 people. "Tuvalu in 2018, the whole country was responsible for 30,000 tons of greenhouse gases... So a whole nation had less carbon emissions than Abramovich." And not just any nation.
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Tuvalu is literally sinking because of climate change. "We cannot wait for speeches when the sea is rising around us all the time." Okay so that was an extreme example. How about Microsoft founder Bill Gates? He's a billionaire who at least gets the problem. "Avoiding a climate disaster" "So we need green cement, green steel" "To bring the emissions from all those areas down to zero" Gates has written an entire book about avoiding a climate disaster.
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And – to his credit – he doesn't own a mega-yacht. But Bill Gates flew around the world with his private jet so much that in 2018 the emissions from his transport were still the same as around 4000 Indians or 500 Americans. Now, Bill Gates didn't respond to our questions about his carbon footprint. But he is a big funder of clean tech, buys green aviation fuel, and has said in interviews he offsets his carbon footprint. Still, avoiding a climate disaster means bringing all emissions
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down to zero – including private jets. "These billionaires, they are aware of the social capital of caring about the environment. But, I don't see them doing anything about it, at least in their in their personal behavior." It's not just celebrities who are the problem. Inequality is falling between countries but growing within them.
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And in cities across the world, the widening gap between the rich and the rest also applies to emissions. Let's look at the top 1% of global earners. That's somebody earning a yearly salary of about $109,000. These people live in cities from Miami to Mumbai. And they're responsible for one-fifth of the growth in carbon pollution in the last 30 years. "The top 1% use basically a similar amount to the bottom 50% of humanity.
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And so obviously that in just in terms of scale is a ridiculous proportion of the carbon budget." This is Anisha Nazareth, a scientist studying emissions inequality. She says it not just about lifestyles. "Things like space travel and private jets and yachts and stuff are absurd. But a bigger problem is really the way they exert political influence through campaign donations and influence in general on the lifestyles of everybody else."
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There are two ways this takes place. The first is full-scale lobbying: Rich people have poured money into preserving the status quo — and that's working out pretty well for them. The second is... "Lifestyles of the rich and the famous" Society glamorizes the rich. From Jeff Bezos blasting into space to Kim Kardashian's holidays, we're obsessed with their opulent lifestyles – and often want them for ourselves.
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So how can we clean them up? The first answer is the most obvious: Don't let the uber-rich get so rich in the first place. Now this video isn't about to descend into a rant about capitalism... But even hard-core ideologues admit the ultra-rich often avoid taxes and exploit loopholes in the system to grow even richer. By raising taxes, closing legal loopholes and cracking down on tax havens, policymakers could make it more costly for the wealthy to pollute.
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And in doing so, they'd raise money to invest in clean energy infrastructure. But bear in mind it's not just the ultra-rich who emit way too much. A middle-class person in New York or Berlin – or an upper middle-class person in Delhi or Jakarta – well, we're also spending money on luxuries the climate can't afford. Here is how many tons of CO2 the top 10% and top 1% of earners emit in a year. Sharing their wealth would massively boost living standards
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and cut some luxury spending. Progress has been slow because the rich, unsurprisingly, want to stay rich. And that's why it makes sense to target their emissions too. The best example of this is flying. If you've stepped foot on a plane this year, you belong to the elite 2-4% of the population who flies in a given year. And if you fly more than once a year, your carbon footprint is pretty much guaranteed to be incompatible with doing your fair share for a stable climate.
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One way to solve this is a carbon tax: Raise the cost of flying to reflect the damage it does to the planet and a lot more people will holiday closer to home. Sounds simple. But it also makes flying – this thing that's already only accessible to a small group of people – even more elite. You would have to set a blanket carbon tax extremely high to deter the frequent fliers and business travelers. That same added cost would be felt much more by a middle-class family. "The very wealthy, specifically the 1%, will always buy
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their way out of carbon taxes just because they can." This is Stefan Gössling, a sustainability researcher who says we should focus on the super frequent fliers – people who, for instance, take more than 12 flights a year. "Even though they are just 1% of the world's population, this little group will account for more than half of all the aviation emissions
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that the system is causing in a year." One way to address this is to increase the cost of flying for every extra flight you take. This is known as a frequent flier levy. It would cut demand for air travel without pushing the activity further into the hands of the very richest. That sounds like an idea everybody could get behind, right? "In reality we see a surprising support of the lifestyles of the very wealthy."
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This is where decarbonizing the rich gets tricky – celebrated by the media, people who aspire to their luxury lifestyles don't necessarily want to limit them. Across the world people of all incomes are fed the ideal of the... "American Dream" "The American Dream" "The American Dream" ...which partly explains why people are against restrictions on flying that wouldn't even apply to them. So what if we focus on the uppermost end of the spectrum: private jets?
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The ultra-rich use them for completely unnecessary routes – like Kylie Jenner taking a super short flight. Here's a policy that could kill two birds with one stone: Ban private jets that run on kerosene. Not only will it save the emissions from those flights. It would spur investments that are sorely needed to push forward greener ways of flying – like with hydrogen – and would bring down costs. Experts say early investments like this would help advance
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sustainable aviation fuels and electric flights for everybody. But it would also be a mistake to focus solely on what rich people buy. "Because people who are wealthy contribute the most to causing climate change, they are unfortunately also in the most ideal position to help us mitigate climate change. This is Kristian Nielsen, a scientist and lead author of a study on what the richest 1% can do to stop climate change.
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"In the paper we sketch five different roles – the first one is what they do as a consumer. We broaden that to also consider what can they do as investors? Because the more wealth and income you have, the more money you can invest into companies – linked to fossil fuel, or renewable energy production." Because rich people have more influence within organizations, they can also lobby for change where they work.
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"If a lot of people aspire to their level of status, they could influence the behavior and actions of those people who follow them. And then the final role we see is what they can do as a citizen. So, in democracies we can vote, we can try to influence policies, we could become members of social movements, we could organize at a community level."
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Rich people across the world buy electric cars, invest money in sustainable pension funds and vote for parties with climate-friendly policies. But a lot of them are also doing the exact opposite. And given how well the system works for the rich now – and particularly the ultra-rich – it's going to take more than their goodwill to change them. "We can pressure companies and policymakers to implement taxation, a wealth tax, consumption tax, whichever policy will
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help reduce their influence." Cleaning up the lifestyles of the rich is a clear-cut win for the climate. But for the most part, the rich aren't going to just decarbonize themselves. Policies that redistribute their wealth need to gain societal acceptance. Policies that target their emissions need to avoid a backlash from people who look up to their lifestyles. And, yeah, getting there might take some systemic shifts to reduce the influence rich people have on policymakers and the media.
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But recognizing that the wealthy have more power to stop climate change is the first step to tackling their outsize pollution. "Few people watching this video are going to be in the top 1%, but a lot of us are in the top 10%. So where do you feel the most power to stop climate change? Click subscribe and let us know if the comments."
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