A new study estimates the world’s highest-consuming 10% generate up to $5.7tn in yearly environmental damage, highlighting their disproportionate role in driving climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
The world’s highest-consuming 10 percent of people are responsible for environmental damage worth as much as $5.7 trillion a year, according to a new study, a figure larger than the annual economic output of every country except the United States and China.
Researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Leiden found that these so-called “mega-consumers” are heavily concentrated in wealthier nations, making up more than half of the population in the United States and between 40 and 45 percent of people across the European Union.
The study highlights the enormous environmental costs associated with high levels of consumption, particularly in food and energy use. Researchers said the findings underscore how global economic priorities continue to place pressure on the planet’s life-support systems despite growing concerns over climate change and biodiversity loss.
The most environmentally damaging forms of consumption were linked to food production, especially red meat, which is a major driver of deforestation, and energy use, including air travel and the heating and cooling of homes that often depend on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Published on Thursday in the journal Communications Sustainability, the study estimated the financial impacts of climate disruption, biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution and freshwater use to calculate the environmental damage bill.
According to the report, the average annual environmental damage attributable to an individual within the global top 10 percent ranged between $2,300 and $7,500. In the United States, however, that figure increased dramatically to between $19,000 and $63,000 per person.
The researchers also found that affluent households in emerging economies are rapidly catching up. China’s top 10 percent now generate a higher average environmental damage bill than their counterparts in Germany.
Biodiversity loss represented the largest share of the global environmental cost, accounting for between 47 and 56 percent of the total damage. The climate crisis contributed a further 36 to 45 percent.
The authors said their findings strengthen arguments for tackling biodiversity loss and climate change together rather than treating them as separate policy issues.
They also cautioned that the true environmental cost is likely to be considerably higher. The calculations cover only four of the nine planetary boundaries identified by scientists and account solely for direct consumption, excluding the potentially greater impacts associated with personal investments.
“If anything, these numbers are conservative. The bill leaves out the emissions tied to wealthy people’s investments,” said Paul Behrens, a British Academy Global Professor at the Oxford Martin School and co-author of the study.
“Research has shown that a large proportion of a rich person’s carbon footprint comes from what they own, not how they live; meaning their stocks, bonds and other assets,” he added.
The findings come shortly after a Greenpeace study estimated that assets owned by the world’s richest one percent, often invested in emissions-intensive industries, were linked to a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly $1 trillion in annual climate-related damage.
The new report argues that governments could target high-consuming groups through measures such as luxury taxes, wealth taxes and carbon taxes. Such policies, the authors said, could reduce emissions and pollution while generating revenue to support sustainability transitions and help reduce inequality.
“The scale of the damage bill illustrates the potential revenue if polluter-pays principles were applied to high-consuming groups,” the study said.
Behrens said the wealthiest consumers hold a unique position in addressing environmental challenges.
“The top 10 percent are important not only because they cause the most damage but also because they hold the most leverage to reduce it,” he said.
“They often have outsized agency, not only individually as consumers but also as investors, employers, trend makers and market shapers. Their power to cut emissions is even larger than their share of them.”
“The people in the top 10 percent should be braver and more courageous in making sure we have a future we can thrive in,” he added.
About the Writer
Jonathan Watts is the Global Environment Writer for The Guardian. He reports on climate change, biodiversity, environmental policy and sustainability issues around the world, with a particular focus on the social and economic impacts of environmental crises.
This post is republished from The Guardian.
