Oxfam Australia Media Release
Fifty of the world’s richest billionaires on average produce more carbon in just 90 minutes than the average person does in their entire lifetime, a new Oxfam report reveals today. Here in Australia, one hour of emissions from Australian billionaires’ superyachts and private jets equals what an average Australian emits in an entire year.
The first-of-its-kind study, “Carbon Inequality Kills,” tracks the emissions from private jets, yachts and polluting investments and details how the super-rich are fueling inequality, hunger and death across the world. The report comes ahead of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, amidst growing fears that climate breakdown is accelerating, driven largely by the emissions of the richest people.
Oxfam analysis also found that:
- An average Australian billionaire has taken 73 flights in a year and travelled distances that would circumnavigate the world 6 times.
- Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer emits over 5000 tons of carbon pollution per year from his superyacht transport alone.
- Greta Packer, whose family became ultra wealthy from Casinos, emits nearly 8450 tons of carbon from her superyacht travel per year.
If the world continues its current emissions, the carbon budget (the amount of CO2 that can still be added to the atmosphere without causing global temperatures to rise above 1.5°C) will be depleted in about four years. However, if everyone’s emissions matched those of the richest 1 per cent, the carbon budget would be used up in under five months. And if everyone started emitting at the same rate as the average billionaire in Oxfam’s study, it would be gone in less than two days.
“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit. Their dirty investments and luxury toys – private jets and yachts – aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet,” said Oxfam Australia Policy and Advocacy Lead, Josie Lee.
“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest are fueling inequality, hunger and – make no mistake – death. It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal. And it should be criminal,” said Ms Lee.
The report, the first-ever study to look at both the luxury transport and polluting investments of billionaires, presents detailed new evidence of how their outsized emissions are accelerating climate breakdown and wreaking havoc on lives and economies. The world’s poorest countries and communities have done the least to cause the climate crisis, yet they experience its most dangerous consequences.
Despite their egregious consumption emissions, the largest share of billionaires’ emissions comes from their investments in corporations where they hold strategic stakes. Nearly 40 per cent of billionaire investments analysed in Oxfam’s research are in highly polluting industries: oil, mining, shipping and cement. On average, a billionaire’s investment portfolio is almost twice as polluting as an investment in the S&P 500. However, if they shifted their investments to a low-carbon-intensity investment fund, their investment emissions would be 13 times lower.
Oxfam’s report details three critical areas, providing national and regional breakdowns, where the emissions of the world’s richest 1 per cent since 1990 are already having – and are projected to have – devastating consequences:
- Global inequality. The emissions of the richest 1 per cent have caused global economic output to drop by Int. $2.9 trillion since 1990. The biggest impact will be in countries least responsible for climate breakdown. Low- and lower-middle-income countries will lose about 2.5 per cent of their cumulative GDP between 1990 and 2050. Southern Asia, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will lose 3 per cent, 2.4 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively. High-income countries, on the other hand, will accrue economic gains.
- Hunger. The emissions of the richest 1 per cent have caused crop losses that could have provided enough calories to feed 14.5 million people a year between 1990 and 2023. This will rise to 46 million people annually between 2023 and 2050, with Latin America and the Caribbean especially affected (9 million a year by 2050).
- Death. 78 percent of excess deaths due to heat through 2120 will occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
“It’s become so tiring, to be resilient. It’s not something that I have chosen to be – it was necessary to survive. A child shouldn’t need to be strong. I just wanted to be safe, to play in the sand – but I was always fleeing when storms came. Counting dead bodies after a typhoon isn’t something any child should have to do. And whether we survive or not, the rich polluters don’t even care,” said Marinel Sumook Ubaldo, a young climate activist from the Philippines.
Rich countries have failed to keep their $100 billion climate finance promise, and heading into COP29, wealthy countries are trying to sidestep their responsibility to provide new climate finance that adequately addresses the climate financing needs of Global South countries. Oxfam warns that the cost of global warming will continue to rise unless the richest drastically reduce their emissions and provide a fair share of climate finance to support low-income countries.
Ahead of COP29, Oxfam calls on governments to:
- Reduce the emissions of the richest. Governments must introduce permanent income and wealth taxes on the top 1 per cent, ban or heavily tax carbon-intensive luxury consumption – starting with private jets and superyachts – and regulate corporations and investors to drastically reduce their emissions. A wealth tax on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise at least $1.7 trillion annually. Here in Australia, it would raise $32 billion annually.
- Make rich polluters pay. Climate finance needs are enormous and escalating, especially in Global South countries that are withstanding the worst of climate impacts. Analysis by Ross Garnaut and Rod Sims, found a carbon levy in Australia would raise $100 billion in its first year. Part of this revenue should be used to support impacted countries and communities in our region and in Australia.
- Reimagine our economies. The current economic system, designed to accumulate wealth for the already rich through relentless extraction and consumption, has long undermined a truly sustainable and equitable future for all. Governments need to commit to ensuring that, both globally and at a national level, the incomes of the top 10 per cent are no higher than the bottom 40 per cent.
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Unsurprising. The rich have always seen themselves as a cut above the plebeians, and I don’t expect that attitude to change anytime in the near (or far) future. It’s a function of the personal psychology that accompanies one’s sense of fulfilment & success… as in (politely stated) “I made it to the top, you didn’t, so screw you, you loser.”
And, I challenge anyone to refute this analysis, as to provide an example of any… any rich person, who doesn’t think or behave as if they’re better than the common folk.
You’re right Canguro, but I’ve often thought that Mike Cannon-Brookes might be an exception.
But there’s a shake-up going on in billionaire-land.
In a big move, UK banking Giant, HSBC, has officially joined China’s interbank cross-border payment system. This is a signal that no matter the political pressure from the US, China’s economy is just too important to ignore.
The faceless figures trying to run the world will be frantic as they search for ways to protect the US$.
What are the chances they’ll start yet another war?
I mean to say, the other two are going so well for them, what could possibly go wrong?
Yeah, winners and losers, such an ephemeral olde worlde concept. Especially winners seeking to preserve their ‘winnings’ as an inheritance to be passed on – how wretched and passé.
That billionaires collectively try to hide out in their sieges between jurisdictions is a sign of their ultimate anti-social frailty – it’s only a matter of time and revolution that will bring them to heel.
BRICS was seen as a weird thing pooh-poohed by the hegemonic ‘West’, but now that it’s become BRICS+++, the ‘West’ is now shitting bricks, with their brutality and militarism costing them dearly whilst their indulgent, over-wrought economies crumble before their eyes, and their hedges doing less and less for them.
Despite the BRICS participant’s separate ‘nationalistic’ political ordure marking their differences, those differences don’t seem to dissuade them from removing themselves from the ordure of the ‘West’.
It is notable that many including the banks and resources companies are having at least a bet each way.
In my experience I have found that the wealthier a person is the higher their arsehole quotient becomes. Call it one of our species many failings but those of the ‘haves’ like nothing better than to gloat at the ‘have nots’ like they think they are better than the peasants simply because they inherited their wealth, or more than likely cheated their way to the top by screwing all and sundry to get there.
Monty Python to the rescue… see the violence inherent in the system!
Canguro. Lindsay Fox.
Barry Thompson, that’d be the Lindsay Fox, owner of a $90M superyacht as well as two Bombardier Global jets ~ $20-$60 million each, and a Learjet 35 – begging the question of just how many private jets does a man really need – along with a ~$60M collection of vintage cars, the same person who has fought the Victorian government for years over his determination to add beachfront to his Portsea mansion, and just for kicks, partied with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell along with James Packer on his yacht in Sydney Harbour?
Yeh, sure… just a regular guy. Or maybe I’m wrong… I don’t know him and expect I never will.
Canguro, He donated $100 million to the National Gallery of Victoria, worked with Bill Kelty to alleviate unemployment, and other philanthropic work.
I guess if you can afford your time and money in those ways, you can afford to spend whatever you like on yourself.
He is also a made his fortune through hard yakka, so put the green eyed monster back in its box.
BT, you’d be aware, I hope, of the so-called seven deadly sins; anger, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, pride & sloth.
Greed & envy have never featured in my life as best as I can determine. I thank you for your advice, misplaced as it may be.
Meanwhile, while the Lindsay Foxes of the world, plutocrats rich as Croesus, financiers, tech billionaires, the Taylor Swifts and the Adam Sandlers, Tom Cruises, George Clooneys and Tyler Perrys, the Bezos’s, Gates’s, Zuckerbergs, Peter Thiels and all the rest of that uncommon crowd of unimaginably wealthy continue to burn up massive amounts of fuel to facilitate their privileged lifestyles; private jets, super yachts, multiple mansions in multiple countries that need multiple visits as if to demonstrate that yes, they’re still there, yes, they’re still mine, my ego has yet again been suitable stroked and I’m still king of the world, back in that world where billions live in difficulty, many without adequate food, shelter, under threat from climate-induced catastrophes – cyclones, floods, fires, droughts, famine too – as well as being at the blunt end of social traumas that are a function of these environmental stresses, some people find all of this so distressing that they take action in an effort to alert the sleeping majority that the time for complacency is over.
And how are their actions met by the agents of government? Generally, they’re arrested, put before the courts and then jailed. It was ever thus.
Nothing will change, until those in power find themselves personally discomfited. Fossil fuel extraction will continue until it’s all gone. And the planet is cooked, guaranteed.