Latest news with #SarahSchöngart
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
The Independent
07-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
World's richest 10% responsible for two-thirds of global warming since 1990, study finds
The world's wealthiest 10 per cent have caused more than two-thirds of global warming since 1990, according to a major new study that directly links climate disasters to income-based emissions. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that emissions linked to consumption and investments of high-income individuals have been largely responsible for extreme weather events like heatwaves and droughts, especially in vulnerable regions that have contributed the least to the crisis. 'Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions,' Sarah Schöngart, lead author of the study and researcher at ETH Zurich, said. 'Instead, we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth.' Ms Schöngart said her study provided 'strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions'. Using new modelling techniques, scientists traced emissions from different global income groups and assessed their contributions to specific climate extremes. They found the top 1 per cent of emitters contributed 26 times the global average to increases in deadly heat events and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon. 'If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50 per cent of the global population, the world would have seen almost no additional warming since 1990,' said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the climate impacts group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and co-author of the study. The findings add weight to growing calls for stronger taxes on the carbon footprint of the wealthy, especially through their investments. The study emphasised that emissions embedded in financial portfolios – not just personal consumption – have driven global heating. The study comes just days after the World Meteorological Organisation confirmed that global average temperatures were 1.5C higher than pre-industrial times in 2024, and the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. Scientists warn that the world is now dangerously close to breaching the critical 1.5C limit of the Paris Agreement that countries have pledged to avoid. The world has already seen a sharp rise in billion-dollar disasters, with stronger hurricanes in the US, floods in Europe and heatwaves in Asia all becoming more severe than before. Studies estimate that if the world continues on this path, and global heating reaches 4C by the end of the century, the world economy could shrink by 40 per cent, four times more than previous estimates. Before the latest study, a 2020 Oxfam report found the richest 1 per cent were responsible for more than twice the emissions of the poorest 50 per cent between 1990 and 2015. A follow-up report last year estimated that the average billionaire emitted over a million times more carbon than the average person in the bottom 99 per cent. Fifty of the world's richest billionaires produce, on average, more carbon emissions in under three hours than the average British person does in their entire lifetime, the report said. Campaigners have been calling for wealth taxes that target carbon-intensive assets, frequent flyers, private jet owners and high-emitting companies. The authors of the study argued that targeting the financial flows and portfolios of high-income individuals could yield substantial climate benefits. 'This is not an academic discussion – it's about the real impacts of the climate crisis today,' Ms Schleussner said. '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.' Researchers said making rich individual polluters pay could also help provide much-needed support for adaptation and loss in vulnerable countries.
