Study: Top 10% of Consumers Cost Earth $5.7 Trillion in Annual Damage
Researchers estimate biodiversity loss and climate change make up most of the global 10%’s $1.7 trillion to $5.7 trillion annual damage bill.
- On Thursday, a study published in Communications Sustainability estimated the world's top 10% of consumers cause up to $5.7 trillion in annual environmental damage, surpassing international climate and biodiversity financing gaps.
- Researchers from Leiden University and the University of Oxford calculated this damage bill using 2017 consumption data and planetary boundaries to quantify environmental harm across climate, biodiversity, and nutrient cycles.
- The top 10% of American consumers face annual bills ranging from $19k to $63k per person, while India's top 10% face significantly lower costs between $410 and $1.4k, reflecting consumption inequality.
- Environmental taxes targeting this group could help cover climate and biodiversity financing gaps, potentially addressing shortfalls in the Loss and Damages Fund already strapped for cash.
- Oxford professor Paul Behrens of the Oxford Martin School argued the top 10% hold outsized leverage as investors and employers, noting their power to cut emissions exceeds their share of them.
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As they pointed out in the specialist journal Communications Sustainability, this leads to species extinction, freshwater depletion, and global warming. Scientists are calling for greater accountability for perpetrators. "While I don't like assigning monetary values to the environment—the true value of nature is immeasurable—the monetary amounts clearly demonstrate the scale of the damage and the responsibility of the wealthiest 10 percent," adm…
The richest tenth of the world's population is causing damage to the environment in trillions. A team of researchers from the UK and the Netherlands has calculated this.
World’s Richest 10% Are Costing Earth Trillions, New Study Shows
Gas emissions at a manufacturing complex in Toronto, Canada. Credit: UN Photo / Kibae Park / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The world’s richest 10% of consumers are costing Earth trillions of dollars in environmental damage every year, according to a new study published in Communications Sustainability. The wealthiest tenth of the global population caused between $1.7 trillion and $5.7 trillion in harm in 2017 alone, the research found. The study was …
Global warming, species extinction, freshwater consumption: The richest people contribute significantly disproportionately to the destruction of the environment, as a new study shows.
The top ten percent heat up the earth, a new study shows. A tax could help - in several ways
The top 10 percent of people in the world cause an average of $2,300-7,500 (700,000-2.3 million forints) of environmental damage per person per year.
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