The world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study.
“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 Sarah Schöngart, a climate modelling analyst and the study’s lead author.
The new research attempts to specifically quantify how much that inequality in emissions feeds into climate breakdown.
In 2020, the global mean temperature was 0.61C higher than 1990. The researchers found that about 65% of that increase could be attributed to emissions from the global richest 10%, a group they defined as including all those earning more than €42,980 (£36,472) a year.
“We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change.