Since the Industrial Revolution, emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities have increased from a negligible level to more than 40 billion tons a year. As these emissions have accumulated in our atmosphere, they have increased the average annual temperature by about 1 degree Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era. Temperature increases have led to glaciers and ice caps melting, sea levels rising, and more frequent and extreme meteorological events, such as heat waves and droughts, with cascading effects on ecosystems, agricultural yields, human health, and livelihoods. While the effects of climate change are global, and their projected impacts concern every area in the world, a wide scientific literature suggests that climate risks disproportionately affect the poorest countries and people, who are more exposed and more vulnerable to their impacts. Another narrative, climate science denial and greenwashing, has been to quash all immediate impulse to respond to perceived crisis and buy time for commercial interests to construct some other eventual market solution to global warming.
Greenhouse gas emissions today are mainly linked to the level of a nation’s wealth: the richest countries represent only 16 percent of the world population but almost 40 percent of CO2 emissions. The two categories of the poorest countries in the World Bank classification account for nearly 60 percent of the world’s population, but for less than 15 percent of emissions. On a per capita basis, emissions are about 20 metric tons of CO2-equivalent a person a year in the United States – approximately double the amount per person in the European Union or in China, and almost 10 times the amount in India. The world’s wealthiest 10% were responsible for around half of global emissions in 2015, according to a 2020 report. The top 1% were responsible for 15% of emissions, nearly twice as much as the world’s poorest 50%, who were responsible for just 7% and will feel the brunt of climate impacts despite bearing the least responsibility for causing them.
In recent decades, global economic growth has lifted millions out of extreme poverty and reduced inequalities between countries. But unmanaged climate change threatens to set back that progress by damaging poverty eradication efforts worldwide, and disproportionately affecting the poorest regions and people. Mitigating climate change is a necessary condition for sustainably improving living standards around the world. At the same time, distributive and procedural justice must be at the forefront of every stage of environmental policy making. But even as time runs out for tackling climate change, many governments balk at behaviour-change policies fearing they will be politically toxic to voters and unpalatable to the rich. The control that the wealthiest have over governments through lobbying and hefty donations gives them huge influence to dilute climate action and shape the choices available for everyone, says Dario Kenner.1 Climate equity is the goal of recognizing and addressing the unequal burdens made worse by climate change, while ensuring that all people share the benefits of climate protection efforts.
Fearing strong state regulation that would be needed to address global warming, Big Oil and neoliberal think-tanks joined forces to peddle disinformation on the science of climate change. The template to follow was the good job that think-tanks did in denying the link between second hand smoke and lung cancer – that was fully funded by big tobacco companies – and adopt this model to create denial, doubt, confusion. Over time, as people began to see through these basic lies over climate change, these think-tanks largely backed off trying to convince people climate change was a hoax, rather focused on falsehoods such as anthropogenic climate change is natural, inconsequential (or beneficial), and/or too expensive to fix anyway. We need to embed a concern with climate change into people’s everyday lives, while recognizing the formidable problems involved in doing so: Indirect means may sometimes be the best way. For instance, the public may be more responsive to a drive for energy efficiency or renewable resources than to warnings about the dangers of climate change.
Most carbon pricing systems today have tended to increase cost of food and other basic items and add to inflation. Basically, carbon pricing has failed because the economic burden falls primarily on low-income households, a charge that can be leveled against any market or price mechanism used to allocate a scarce resource. This is why all modern economies have extra stress on social programs to address these equity concerns. Lewis Akenji observes: Individual actions won’t be enough to tackle climate change, and guilt and shame won’t help. But choices and actions do matter. “I think we should all become political activists in one way or another,” he says. “What we’re going to do is very deliberately and decisively go after our governments and ask them to live up to their commitments.” Policymakers must guarantee that adaptation policies will actually benefit those most in need and will not be hijacked by the wealthiest or by political interests.1
To meet the global target of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, humanity must significantly reduce carbon emissions, which will necessitate radical changes in how investors and corporations conduct business and public policy. “We need COP27 to expose and change the role that big corporates and their rich investors are playing in profiting from the pollution that is driving the global climate crisis,” says Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam. “They can’t be allowed to hide or greenwash. We need governments to tackle this urgently by publishing emission figures for the richest people, regulating investors and corporates to slash carbon emissions and taxing wealth and polluting investments.” The longer we delay emission reduction, the more robust and disruptive policy reactions will be once societies are forced to face the implications of global warming. The politics of climate change to cope with global warming requires a long-term perspective be introduced.2
What else links climate change and inequities? “A few billionaires (corporations) together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” claims Dabi “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making.” These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. The evidence is mounting: a World Bank report estimated that an additional 68 to 135 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of climate change. As the poorest tend to be excluded from the decision-making process, there is always a risk of underinvestment in actions that would be particularly beneficial to them. Policies need to be tailored to ensure they do not impose undue financial constraints on those who have the fewest resources.2
A number of theoretical explanations have been proposed for why inequality might raise per capita greenhouse gas emissions, including: 1) inequality exacerbates the ability of the wealthy – who benefit more and suffer less from environmental degradation – to protect their interests within social decision-making processes; 2) inequality reduces cohesion, cooperation, and trust, potentially inhibiting collective action to protect the environment; 3) inequality impedes diffusion of green innovations to the mass market; and 4) inequality leads to Veblen effects whereby consumption of energy-intensive goods and services increases as individuals aim to emulate and compete with the status-based consumption of the wealthy. The outstanding challenge then: how economic inequality itself could be a significant driver of higher greenhouse gas emissions?3
Neoliberalism blames the individual consumer for producing carbon emissions, choosing to ignore the socioeconomic factors that propagate climate inequality in minority groups. This has resulted in environmental degradation and wealth inequality, preventing any possibility of collective action. Since 1988, one-hundred companies alone are solely responsible for 71% of total global emissions. We are instructed by corporations to internalize and blame ourselves for global warming, as they force idyllic neoliberal promises down our throats. The right time to confront climate change was decades ago, but neoliberalism has continued to block political and legislative action, turning science into a political debate. Climate change demands unprecedented public cooperation and coordination. To lower emissions, we must return privatized utilities to public control, regulate companies to phase out fossil fuels, implement a carbon tax, allocate more money to increase community resistance to climate change, and emphasize renewable energy.
Public participation recognizes that everyone has something important to say and gives everyone a voice. Almost half a century ago, scientists and technical experts dominated national and global discussions on environmental change. Today, the role of people, particularly a progressive private sector and civil society, contributes to a diversity of voices that are fresh, vocal and innovative. The leading sustainability data provider found that the efforts of just 22% of the world’s 500 biggest public companies by market value are aligned with the Paris Agreement, aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That’s a measly gain from 18% of firms in 2018. Mainstreaming climate reporting among corporations is key for setting or monitoring emission reduction goals. Companies that gain a holistic view of how climate change affects their performance and bottom line through adopting this framework can act as examples.
Where can we turn? Governments should implement a wealth tax on the richest people and an additional steep rate top-up on wealth invested in polluting industries. It will also raise billions that can be used to help countries cope with the brutal impacts of climate breakdown and the loss and damage they incur and fund the global shift to renewable energy. Corporations must put in place ambitious and time-bound climate change action plans with short-to-medium term targets in line with global climate change objectives in a view to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. We must beware of the increase in greenwashing incidents (the process of conveying a false impression, making unsubstantiated claims, or publishing misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound or how the company will achieve its environmental objectives, such as net zero) over the previous years.
By hitting the poorest hardest, climate change risks both increasing existing economic inequalities and causing people to fall into poverty. In summary, the individual action that matters most is voting. Climate change is a problem governments will solve, not individuals. As we move to a low carbon world, those with the greatest responsibility for having got us here must be held to account. That’s starting with the fossil fuel, agribusiness, cement and concrete, and mining industries, plus their financial backers. Moving to open and accessible renewable energy, restoring forests and shifting to sustainable agriculture will not only address the climate and nature emergencies, but it will also reverse the gross imbalance between rich and poor, those who can afford to adapt and those who can’t. Addressing the climate crisis gives us the opportunity and mandate to reorient our societies towards protecting our human rights and repairing political, social and economic inequities.
3 https://lpeproject.org/blog/climate-change-and-the-neoliberal-imagination/