Latest news with #NatureClimateChange
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Why Are Black Neighborhoods Underwater? Science Points to the Wealthy.
In January, a relentless wave of wildfires tore through Los Angeles, reducing a historic Black community to ash and claiming 29 lives. Later that month, a rare winter storm brought heavy snow to the Southeast and the Gulf Coast. Eleven people perished. Then, in March, more than 100 tornadoes ripped through the South in two days, leaving 42 dead across eight states. Weeks later, rain and extensive flooding soaked the region, resulting in hundreds of water rescues and 25 deaths. All of these disasters — from wildfires to floods and tornadoes — have connections to global warming. In America, researchers say, they all are connected to how much money is in your bank account, too. A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change this month found that emissions from the wealthiest Americans have led to increased heat waves and flooding, particularly in communities of color. Scientists say that the findings underscore an often overlooked aspect of the climate crisis — that those least responsible for global warming often face the most severe impacts of environmental change. Or, put another way: Black communities in the United States are bearing the brunt of a climate crisis that they did little to cause. And, researchers say, the toll of climate change also disproportionately costs Black Americans their lives. Since 1999, Black people have died from natural disasters and extreme weather, at a rate nearly twice as high as white people. In the South, it is even more pronounced, with Black people dying at a rate in some states that is more than three times higher than for white people. 'This is not an academic discussion — it's about the real impacts of the climate crisis today,' said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, a researcher with the policy group Climate Analytics and a co-author of the Nature Climate Change study. Schleussner and his fellow researchers found that emissions from the wealthiest Americans have directly caused these increased heat waves, winter storms, and flooding. In all, the world's richest 10% are responsible for nearly two-thirds of global warming since 1990. Yet it is neighborhoods like those in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and St. Louis — where Black families emit far less climate change-causing carbon — who are left to pick up the pieces after each calamity. The disasters are deadly — even for those that survive them. They've left thousands of Black families in the aftermath without housing and jobs. And with every passing day, researchers say, a disproportionate number of Black families are grappling with punishing heat, flooding, and pollution — threats that are growing more severe each year. 'Climate action that doesn't address the outsize responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risks missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm,' Schleussner said. Lessening those harms can be difficult for already under-resourced Black communities, said Gabrielle Cole, a St. Louis resident who lost her home to tornadoes earlier this month. 'We are just unprepared,' said Cole. 'We are unprepared as a community, and climate change and weather events like this are mainly impacting predominantly Black areas, predominantly underserved communities.' Scientists say that the devastation caused by global warming is becoming increasingly common. Last year, the U.S. experienced 27 separate weather and climate disasters with damages of at least $1 billion each, making it the second-highest year on record, just behind 2023, which saw 28 such events. In all, this decade has seen about 23 disasters per year with damages at $1 billion or more. In comparison, even when accounting for inflation, the increase is dramatic. The 1980s averaged 3.3 per year, the 1990s averaged 5.7, the 2000s averaged 6.7, and the 2010s averaged 13.1. The pattern is clear: As the climate crisis accelerates, it magnifies long-standing racial and economic inequities, making survival and recovery even harder for those with the fewest resources, Cole said. Black neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to extreme weather, receive less disaster recovery aid, and face steeper barriers to recovery. After experiencing roof damage during a 2024 storm, Cole's insurance company told her they'd stop insuring her home in June 2025. Then she lost her home altogether to a tornado. Nearly 30 people died during the storm system. 'It comes at us from all directions,' she said, first with the storms and then the fallout. 'There's a lot of people strategizing on how to acquire Black land after these events, and to take these homes from us in a vulnerable state.' Below, you can click through a story map that outlines the real life impacts of climate change on Black communities. The world's wealthiest 10% of people — defined as those who earn at least $47,000 per year — contributed seven times more to the rise in monthly heat extremes around the world than the global average. While millions of Black Americans fall into the world's top 10%, the median income for Black Americans is $43,000, roughly $15,000 less than white Americans. That means more than half of Black adults are making less than $47,000 per year. Several studies show that Black households emit less carbon per capita than white households, and white households are the largest emitters of greenhouse gas in the country. 'This is something that we've known for a long time through our experience,' said Lemir Teron, an associate professor in Howard University's Department of Earth, Environment, and Equity. 'Black Americans, at least amongst Americans, contribute much less to climate change, but we feel it the most.' Teron, who was not part of the study's research team, said that the findings show that true responsibility 'lies across all sectors, especially those with the largest environmental impact,' he added. That means a 'stronger critique of the industries driving climate change — like the transportation and building sectors — and of wealthy individuals.' The post Why Are Black Neighborhoods Underwater? Science Points to the Wealthy. appeared first on Capital B News.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Richest 1% create 20% of global warming, study finds
[Source] A study published in Nature Climate Change finds that the wealthiest 1% of the global population are responsible for roughly 20% of global warming since 1990. The study examines emissions by income level rather than by country, revealing that wealthy individuals, regardless of nationality, are disproportionately responsible for rising global temperatures and extreme weather events. Carbon inequality: The study, led by Sarah Schöngart and colleagues, found that the top 1% — those earning over about $160,000 annually — emit more than 20 times the carbon of the global average. The poorest half of the world's population, by contrast, contributed just 16% of warming since 1990. Most emissions from the top earners are tied to high-consumption lifestyles, including air travel, luxury goods and fossil fuel investments. The gap between high and low emitters has widened over the past three decades. Global damage, local costs: The study links emissions from wealthy individuals in high-emitting countries to rising heat and drought risks in vulnerable regions such as the Amazon, Southeast Asia and central Africa. In the Amazon, for example, emissions from the top 1% of Chinese earners have driven an 80% increase in extreme heat events. U.S. top 10% emitters are linked to more than 20 times the average global contribution to once-in-a-century heat waves. Trending on NextShark: National disparities: The study also highlights sharp inequalities within countries. In the U.S., the top 10% emit about three times more than the average citizen and 17 times more than the global average. In China and India, the top 10% also emit significantly above their fair share despite lower national averages. Call for equitable climate policy: Researchers warn that climate action will fall short unless it addresses emissions from the top income groups. They call for policies such as progressive carbon pricing, restrictions on luxury emissions and increased climate finance for affected regions. The study concludes that without curbing emissions from the wealthiest, efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels are likely to fail. Trending on NextShark: This story is part of The Rebel Yellow Newsletter — a bold weekly newsletter from the creators of NextShark, reclaiming our stories and celebrating Asian American voices. Subscribe free to join the movement. If you love what we're building, consider becoming a paid member — your support helps us grow our team, investigate impactful stories, and uplift our community. Subscribe here now! Trending on NextShark: Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today!
Daily Maverick
11-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
Climate justice in focus: How the wealthy fuel extreme weather through consumption and investments
A new study has found that the richest 10% of people are responsible for two-thirds of global warming since 1990. But as debate swirls over who should bear the cost of climate change, the study's lead author, Sarah Schöngart, says understanding how responsibility is calculated is just as important as the headline figure. A new study released this week has quantified what many have long suspected: the world's wealthiest people are responsible for the majority of global warming since 1990 that causes increases in climate extremes, such as heatwaves and droughts. Published in Nature Climate Change on Wednesday, 7 May 2025, the research reveals that the richest 10% of the global population are responsible for two-thirds of the warming that has occurred since 1990, a finding that sharpens the debate over climate justice and who should bear the costs of a heating planet. What sets this study apart is not just the scale of the numbers, but how it traces those emissions. The authors, led by Sarah Schöngart of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, used advanced climate models to link emissions from different income groups directly to the frequency and intensity of extreme events — like heatwaves and drought — around the world. 'Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth,' said Schöngart, an alumna of the 2024 Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP), who is currently associated with ETH Zurich, a top science and technology university in Switzerland 'We found that wealthy emitters play a major role in driving climate extremes, which provides strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions.' How the top 10% are contributing The study finds that the top 10% of global earners contributed 65% of the increase in global mean temperature since 1990 — which is six-and-a-half times their share of the world's population. Their impact comes from two main sources: Personal consumption: Frequent flying and luxury travel, driving large or luxury vehicles, living in bigger homes that require more energy, and consuming more goods and services that generate emissions. Financial investments: They also contribute to global warming by investing in or owning companies and industries that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, such as fossil fuel production, manufacturing, and other high-pollution sectors. Not just about private jets It's long been known that the rich pollute more — a 2022 study found that the top 10% of global earners were responsible for nearly half of all carbon emissions in 2019, while the poorest half accounted for just one-tenth. But this new study goes further. Using advanced climate models, the researchers traced not only emissions from personal consumption — such as frequent flights, large homes, and high-end goods — but also from financial investments. The study uses a 'mixed ownership' approach: most emissions are attributed to consumers, but emissions from capital formation in productive sectors (like energy, steel, and cement) are attributed to firm owners and shareholders, not just end consumers. Is it fair to calculate investments? Some might argue that fossil fuel companies provide energy and services that society relies on, so is it fair to assign responsibility to investors? Schöngart told Daily Maverick that this was a matter of how national accounts separated flows across institutional sectors — the government, households, and investment. 'The accounting method for allocating emissions is a mixed ownership approach, meaning direct emissions, e.g. household heating, are attributed to consumers while all emissions in productive sectors, e.g. in producing and selling a T-shirt, are divided between consumers and shareholders,' said Schöngart. In other words, when a fossil fuel company emits carbon, responsibility is shared between those who use its products and those who profit from its operations. As Schöngart puts it: 'You can think of investment as the investments embedded in gross fixed capital formation across all productive sectors of the economy (e.g. in building factories, buying machines).' She explained that their study was based on models and data from Lucas Chancel's 2022 study on global carbon inequality, which uses a 'mixed ownership' approach that reflected both consumption and ownership of productive assets. Chancel's research highlighted that, to mitigate climate change fairly and effectively, it was necessary to look beyond just what people bought and used, and also consider the pollution caused by the companies and investments that wealthier people owned. Policies targeting asset-related emissions could be an important way to reduce carbon pollution, especially by the wealthiest people. This approach is important because, as Oxfam has reported, the emissions linked to billionaires' investments can be up to 70% of their total carbon footprint — sometimes exceeding their direct lifestyle emissions by orders of magnitude. For example, a billionaire's investment emissions can rival those of entire countries like France or Argentina. Real world impact The study shows that emissions from the top 10% wealthiest people contributed seven times more than the global average to the increase in the most extreme heat events, and six times more to Amazon droughts. In the United States and China, the emissions of the wealthiest led to a two- to threefold increase in heat extremes across already vulnerable regions. 'If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990,' says co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who leads the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at IIASA. 'Addressing this imbalance is crucial for fair and effective climate action.' How this compares at home The global study's main finding — that the wealthiest people are responsible for a disproportionate share of emissions and climate impacts — holds true in South Africa too. South Africa's richest households have far larger carbon footprints than the average citizen, mirroring the global pattern. However, South Africa's emissions profile is different to many other countries. As Professor Harro von Blottnitz, from UCT's Energy Systems Research Group points out, most of our emissions come from extraction and production for export, rather than domestic consumption. 'In that sense, the wealthiest 10% of South Africans may be similar to the global rich, but the emissions linked to their lifestyles can often occur elsewhere — such as in China or Europe, or through international flights — rather than inside South Africa,' he said. 'Meanwhile, much of what's emitted here actually supports consumption in other countries.' He also notes that South Africa's heavy-emitting industries were more publicly owned than privately owned, and that private capital had shifted over the past two decades from energy-intensive sectors into luxury goods, which could still carry a hidden carbon footprint. The study doesn't assign moral blame, but it does provide a framework for understanding climate accountability. Schöngart and her co-authors write: 'Quantifying the link between wealth disparities and climate impacts can assist in the discourse on climate equity and justice.' DM
Observer
11-05-2025
- Science
- Observer
World's richest 10% caused two thirds of global warming: study
The world's wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said on Wednesday. How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events. "We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts," lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, told AFP. "It's a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability." Compared to the global average, for example, the richest one percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves, and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the findings, published in Nature Climate Change. Emissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States -- which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution -- each led to a two-to-threefold rise in heat extremes. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated Earth's average surface by 1.3 degrees Celsius, mostly during the last 30 years. Schoengart and colleagues combined economic data and climate simulations to trace emissions from different global income groups and assess their impact on specific types of climate-enhance extreme weather. The researchers also emphasised the role of emissions embedded in financial investment rather than just lifestyle and personal consumption. "Climate action that doesn't address the outsized responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risk missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm," said senior author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna. - Billionaires tax - Owners of capital, he noted, could be held accountable for climate impacts through progressive taxes on wealth and carbon-intensive investments. Earlier research has shown that taxing asset-related emissions is more equitable than broad carbon taxes, which tend to burden those on lower incomes. Recent initiatives to increase taxes on the super-rich and multinationals have mostly stalled, especially since Donald Trump regained the White House. Last year, Brazil -- as host of the G20 -- pushed for a two-percent tax on the net worth of individuals with more than $1 billion in assets. Although G20 leaders agreed to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed," there has been no follow-up to date. In 2021, nearly 140 countries agreed on work toward a global corporate tax for multinational companies, with nearly half endorsing a minimum rate of 15 percent, but those talks have stalled as well. Almost a third of the world's billionaires are from the United States -- more than China, India and Germany combined, according to Forbes magazine. According to anti-poverty NGO Oxfam, the richest 1 percent have accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade. It says the richest one percent have more wealth than the lowest 95 percent combined. —AFP
Qatar Tribune
08-05-2025
- Science
- Qatar Tribune
World's richest 10% caused two thirds of global warming: Study
Agencies The world's wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said on Wednesday. How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events. 'We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts,' lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, told AFP. 'It's a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.' Compared to the global average, for example, the richest one percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves, and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the findings, published in Nature Climate Change. Emissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States—which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution—each led to a two-to-threefold rise in heat extremes. Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated Earth's average surface by 1.3 degrees Celsius, mostly during the last 30 years. Schoengart and colleagues combined economic data and climate simulations to trace emissions from different global income groups and assess their impact on specific types of climate-enhance extreme weather. The researchers also emphasized the role of emissions embedded in financial investment rather than just lifestyle and personal consumption. 'Climate action that doesn't address the outsized responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risk missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm,' said senior author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna. Owners of capital, he noted, could be held accountable for climate impacts through progressive taxes on wealth and carbon-intensive investments. Earlier research has shown that taxing asset-related emissions is more equitable than broad carbon taxes, which tend to burden those on lower incomes. Recent initiatives to increase taxes on the super-rich and multinationals have mostly stalled, especially since Donald Trump regained the White House. Last year, Brazil—as host of the G20 -- pushed for a two-percent tax on the net worth of individuals with more than $1 billion in assets. Although G20 leaders agreed to 'engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,' there has been no follow-up to date. In 2021, nearly 140 countries agreed on work toward a global corporate tax for multinational companies, with nearly half endorsing a minimum rate of 15 percent, but those talks have stalled as well. Almost a third of the world's billionaires are from the United States—more than China, India and Germany combined, according to Forbes magazine. According to anti-poverty NGO Oxfam, the richest 1 percent have accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade. It says the richest one percent have more wealth than the lowest 95 percent combined.
