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If just a few billionaires cut back on their carbon emissions, climate change devastation could be stopped in its tracks, a new report from the British nonprofit Oxfam reveals.
"What little carbon dioxide we can still safely emit is being burned indiscriminately by the super-rich," the report states. "The yachts, jets, and polluting investments of the 50 richest billionaires are accelerating the climate crisis."
The exponential difference between an average person's carbon emissions and a billionaire's is staggering. Elon Musk's two private jets alone—not including his emissions from other sources—generate 5,497 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or an average of 15 tonnes per day. This is equal to 11 average people's emissions in their entire lifetimes.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' two jets emit 2,908 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. This is more emissions than two Amazon employees would produce in their entire lives. This means Musk or Bezos emit the amount of carbon dioxide in 90 minutes that you would emit in your entire life.
The emission difference is even more shocking when compared to a person living in a developing country, who, on average, has much smaller footprints than those in developed nations. Twenty-three billionaires' private jets emit an average of 2,074 tonnes of carbon dioxide each per year, which is the lifetime emissions for about four people—or about 26 people living in the poorest half of the world.
Forty percent of billionaires also invest in industries like oil, which worsens their carbon emissions contributions overall. Musk and Bezos are also pushing for more AI use and development—another sector with high energy use that has, more broadly, kept coal-burning plants active in the US. Musk's Tesla also released 20% more greenhouse gas emissions last year. Amazon's carbon footprint has risen over the years, too.
Developing nations are expected to suffer the most from climate change, seeing an estimated $44 trillion in economic damage caused by the ripple effects of carbon emissions from 1990 until 2050.
This has economic impacts, too. The richest 1% are actually causing economic losses of "trillions of dollars" because of their carbon output, destroying crops and agriculture and indirectly causing "millions of excess deaths" due to resulting famines, heat-exacerbated illnesses, and other factors.
While there are things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint and the amount of waste you produce, calling for broader regulatory measures to disincentivize wasteful billionaires' emissions, a high carbon tax for the worst polluters, and voting in politicians who plan to take action on climate change may be more effective in combating the broader, global problem.