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Oxfam has called for action over billionaires “plundering the planet” and placing the world “in grave danger” from climate change with their enormous carbon footprints.
Jamie Livingstone, the head of the charity’s arm in Scotland, said the emissions from a single billionaire space flight would exceed the lifetime emissions of someone in the poorest billion people on earth.
A new study for Oxfam, based on research by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), found that by the end of this decade the carbon footprints of the richest 1% of people on earth are set to be 30 times greater than what is compatible with keeping global warming below 1.5C.
The report’s authors have now called for governments to bring in measures to “constrain luxury carbon consumption like mega yachts, private jets and space travel”.
The report has been released after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a short trip into space and Sir Richard Branson journeyed to the edge of space in his Virgin Galactic rocket plane, while Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company SpaceX is developing a vehicle to take humans to Mars.
But scientists have said that to achieve the goal agreed at the 2015 Paris climate summit, every person on earth would need to limit their CO2 emissions to just 2.3 tonnes by 2030 – roughly half the average carbon footprint today.
According to the new research, the richest 1% of people – smaller than the population of Germany – are expected to account for 16% of total emissions by 2030.
Jeff Bezos ahead of his trip to space in July. File pic
This is an increase from 13% in 1990 and 15% in 2015.
However, the total emissions produced by the richest 10% could be sufficient on their…
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Source : skynews
