OXFAM, Policy and Practice, Briefing Note, 7 November 2022, excerpt:
Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people
Overview
The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments. New analysis of the investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 3 million tonnes a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.
The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies. Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act. Governments must hold them to account, legislating to compel corporates and investors to reduce carbon emissions, enforcing more stringent reporting requirements and imposing new taxation on wealth and investments in polluting industries…...
Investments billionaires make help shape the future of our economy, for example by backing high carbon infrastructure, locking in high emissions for decades to come. Our study found that if the billionaires in the sample moved their investments to a fund with stronger environmental and social standards, it could reduce the intensity of their emissions by up to four times.
The role of corporates and investors in making cuts to carbon emissions that are needed to stop global warming of more than 1.5°C will be a hot topic at the upcoming 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Egypt. Yet despite the corporate spin, their actions fall far short of what is actually needed to stop catastrophic climate breakdown.
Governments should tackle this issue with data, regulation and taxation. They must systematically report on the emissions of different income groups in society, instead of relying on averages which obscure carbon inequality and undermine effective policy making….
In 2021, research conducted by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) revealed that the richest 1% (around 63 million people) alone were responsible for 15% of cumulative emissions and that they were emitting 35 times the level of CO2e compatible with the 1.5°C by 2030 goal of the Paris Agreement.7 Similar findings have been reported by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel.8 Another study drew on public records to estimate that in 2018 emissions from the private yachts, planes, helicopters and mansions of 20 billionaires generated on average about 8,194 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e).9 By contrast, any individual among the poorest one billion people emits around 1.4 tonnes of CO2 each year.10
More recently, Twitter accounts tracking private jet travel have brought the issue of carbon inequality to public attention with revelations that, in a matter of just minutes, billionaires are emitting more CO2 than most people will emit in a year.11…..
The billionaire space race has highlighted how a single space flight can emit as much CO2 as a normal person will in their lifetime.1212 Adding fuel to the fire, this same group of people have the resources to avoid the consequences of climate change, which will be felt most heavily by the poorest people….
Every person on earth emits carbon, but the sources of these emissions change the further up the income scale you move. A person’s total carbon footprint can be divided into personal consumption emissions, emissions through government spending and emissions linked to investments.
For the majority of society, people’s emissions from investments are minimal. But for the richest in society this is reversed, with emissions from investments becoming the biggest source – for the top 1%, between 50% to 70% of their emissions, according to one estimate.14 This mirrors income inequality, where the majority of people derive their incomes from work but the richest derive most of theirs from returns on their investments.
This paper begins with the world’s very richest people and examines the scale of their investment portfolios in order to make an estimate of their investment emissions…..
The 35-page paper can be read and downloaded from here.
