this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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[–] grue@lemmy.world 90 points 11 months ago (6 children)

ITT: people who don't realize that the article is talking about them because they're either in that 1% or damn close to it.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yup most of the Western world is in the top 1 percent. The rest of the Western world benefits from it.

It's me. Hi. I'm the problem. It's me.

[–] aubertlone@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Quoting Taylor Swift is.... an interesting choice when talking about climate changes.

Didn't her recent tour require 90+ semi trucks just to go from city to city? Not even going to mention all the emissions that result from whenever they have to travel by plane.

Yes, popular music acts that tour are a HUGE part of the problem.

Also, my bad I'm not tryna harp on you just because I recognized a song lyric. I'm a Taylor Swift fan myself. Well, more of a chiefs fan. And by value of the transitive property....

Edit: also apparently all air travel only accounts for about 2% of emissions. So while my point isnt technically wrong it's missing the forest for the trees

[–] SCB@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Didn’t her recent tour require 90+ semi trucks just to go from city to city? Not even going to mention all the emissions that result from whenever they have to travel by plane.

Yes, popular music acts that tour are a HUGE part of the problem

They absolutely are not. 90 trucks is nothing.

At any given time there are millions of semis (2.97 million total) driving the streets. Literally every single thing you've ever purchased in your life has been on a semi.

90 trucks driving for a couple months is not significant.

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[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] TaTTe@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

60% of the US population is like 200 million. 1% of the global population is 80 million. Your maths is way off.

I'd assume something closer to 6% of the US are in the top 1%.

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[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago

It's funny how often people who are in the global 5-10% talk about how clueless the 1% of the West is, while being so clueless about their own wealth.

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[–] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 80 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The cover photo is a jet plane but remember, US$140,000/year is the threshold they're quoting in the article so the reality is more like a decent car or two and a house in a nicer area will drop you into that range.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Is that individually or per household? This article gives 130k per household or 60k per individual.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/9/15/23874111/charity-philanthropy-americans-global-rich

[–] flames5123@lemmy.world 13 points 11 months ago

Exactly. I wonder what the top 0.5% emit, or the top 0.1% emit. 140k is just a married couple living in a city. But people that live in a city can take public transit or walk to the store, therefore they won’t be contributing that much to these huge emissions.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 47 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

ITT: People who don't understand cradle to grave manufacturing. When I decide to make a product I take on responsibility for that product until it is no longer in use and has been properly disposed of. That is ethical manufacturing as decided by industry.

If your product is transportation then you are responsible for the emissions created by transporting. The consumer gets no say in it. Even if they were extremely well researched, which no consumer has that type of resources, they are still not privy to all of a businesses practices at every level.

Assholes in this thread want to push off all the responsibility on to consumers, as if being a consumer is unethical. This is a scapegoat for manufacturers who don't want to foot the bill because their product is not viable if you consider the all the corners they cut.

Don't believe me, look up any lawsuit that deals with any superpac. Businesses are responsible.

[–] Adramis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

It feels disingenuous at best to lump in people making $60k/year with Jeff Bezos and other billionaires. Just twelve billionaires account for 2,100,000 homes worth of emissions, and that's only the raw output of their travel and other direct expenses: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide

Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 11 months ago

Yes, we can all do our bit to help out, but workers pointing fingers at other workers will only ever benefit the ruling class.

Don't forget that you have more than one finger. You have fingers to spare to point blame at those who deserve it, and few of us in first world countries don't.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

Yeah, 1% of 8.1 billion is 81 million. So, it's roughly the top 10% of population of the wealthiest countries.

That includes both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but also middle managers in marketing, astronomers, HR managers, air traffic controllers, etc.

[–] yournamehere@lemm.ee 29 points 11 months ago (2 children)

so we cut cut emissions by 60% with a guillotine

[–] pelerinli@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or... we can just double the efford for maximizing gains and see introducing 2% with guillotine give as profit?

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No shit?

Of course the 1% are accounting for the majority of personal emissions, they are the only ones who can afford to.

What I want to know is how much of the total emissions are non private in origin.

[–] Rognaut@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

If that shit were cheaper, people would be all over it.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

That's bullshit of a report. If you read it, you will quickly learn how they calculate emissions from the rich. They include things like owning company shares and having influence over the media. So if Bezos owns a major stake in Amazon, he is automatically responsible for all Amazon emissions. And if his PR team publishes some stuff to FB, he's now responsoble for emissions of Facebook servers. That's utter bullshit.

If you buy from Amazon, it's YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos. This report also doesn't take into account that better off people usually live in well-insulated homes, drive more efficient cars and eat better organic food, thus reducing their footprint further.

This report also mentions yachts and private jets a lot, but don't forget that ALL airtraffic accounts only for 2% of all emissions and private jets are a drop in the ocean.

[–] EatATaco@lemm.ee 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

eat better organic food

A slight nit-pick here, but when it comes to greenhouse gas impact, organic food may be worse. It's certainly not clearly better.

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Almost definitely worse lol. We have the option to modify the genome of the plants we eat in order to make then better in every way and still some people are like "no that's icky because science".

[–] sixCats@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

GMO != organic as far as I know?

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In the US organic means no GMOs as well according to usda

[–] sixCats@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago

Gotcha. That’s a shame

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[–] CraigeryTheKid@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I've overheard that before too. If they would just change their words to "eat less meat" they're be right, but to only say "organic" implies standard agriculture is worse, and it is not clearly so.

We should eat less meat though.

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[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 9 points 11 months ago (4 children)

If you buy from Amazon, it’s YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos.

That would only be true if Amazon had real competition and would not be acting like a monopoly, as many other companies do.

[–] rchive@lemm.ee 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Amazon is very much not a monopoly. There are thousands of online retailers. There are also a lot of delivery services, no idea if there are thousands, but there's a lot.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Isn't it more planet reponsible then to order from Amazon where, if I order say 6 items, they'll come from the same warehouse in the same delivery (at least ove here!) instead of in 6 deliveries from 6 different vendors who also all had to get individual deliveries of their stock first?

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[–] Mamertine@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

better off people usually live in well-insulated homes...

Remember Al Gore's house that he was touting back around 2007 as super energy efficient? Then some news outlets reported it used 25x as much energy as a normal single family home.

Snopes looked into it and said false, it only uses 10x as much electricity as a normal house, but that's okay because it's 4 times the size of a normal house.

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[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 months ago (11 children)

If you buy from Amazon, it’s YOU who are responsoble for all associated emissions like delivery, manufacturing, etc, not Bezos.

no, i'm not.

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[–] vimdiesel@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Go look at any multimillionaire's house in California and then compared its resource usage to a dilapidated trailer in the deep south in a poor county. They'll be using 50-100x the resources of the poor family.

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[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

eat the rich! a bearded man once told us

[–] ComradePorkRoll@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'm now a Marxist-Cannibalist.

Wouldn't eating the rich be survival cannibalism at this point?

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Some say cannibalism, some say saving the Earth.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says.

For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide.

Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans.

“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction and it is those who can least afford it who are paying the highest price,” said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser.

The extravagant carbon footprint of the 0.1% – from superyachts, private jets and mansions to space flights and doomsday bunkers – is 77 times higher than the upper level needed for global warming to peak at 1.5C.

Oxfam International’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, said: “Not taxing wealth allows the richest to rob from us, ruin our planet and renege on democracy.


The original article contains 853 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] vimdiesel@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

when you own 90% of the wealth and resources, i'm kind of shocked that is "poorest 90%"

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