Study after study reveals that the wealthy are driving climate change and environmental destruction. In 2015, Oxfam published a report called “Extreme Carbon Inequality,” which found that the top 10% of people in the world are responsible for 50% of emissions, while the bottom 50% account for just 10%. That same year, economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel analyzed the data and revealed an equally grim figure: “The top 10% of emitters are responsible for 45% of global emissions.”
More recently, a wide-ranging scientific review argued that “the consumption of wealthy households around the world is the overwhelming determinant and accelerator of increasing global environmental and social impacts.” And last month, a new study found that the wealthy (whom it identifies as the “polluting elite”) are “at the heart of the climate problem,” recommending that “substantial lifestyle changes are also needed to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.”
It is not surprising that those on the left are using these studies as fodder for class warfare. JacobinsThis data has led to articles calling for things like “only class struggle can stop climate change” and “confiscation of wealth from the wealthy to save the planet.”
So far so good. But these studies have a fatal flaw: they conceptualize the wealthy’s contribution to global warming and environmental destruction solely in terms of their “wealth” and “consumption.” While the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” are often egregious from an environmental perspective, we need to look beyond their personal consumption choices to understand the true importance of their contribution to climate change, and the political challenges we face to actually halt catastrophic climate change.
Since the basis of these studies is household income data and inferred relationships between spending patterns that relate to emissions or “carbon footprints”, it is not surprising that someone like Thomas Piketty, a world-renowned analyst of income inequality, would use this data to link such inequality to carbon emissions.
But income is not the best way to understand inequality under capitalism. A plumber can earn the same as a college professor, and he can earn exactly the same whether he runs his own plumbing business or works for a large plumbing company.
For Marxists, class and inequality have to do with one's relationship to the means of production. More broadly, class is not about how much money one makes, What you own and controlFor most of us, our labor is something we sell in the market to survive. For the rich, it is their Ownership Property, business and financial wealth itself is what makes them so powerful in a capitalist society.
A rational person might ask, “Okay, but so what?” Own Business and wealth are plentiful, Even higher Their consumption levels are not as high as their income would suggest: Jeff Bezos is famously the richest man in the world, yet earns just $81,840 a year. wealth That allowed him to purchase the largest mansion in the Washington DC area, reportedly with 24 bathrooms. Now imagine the carbon footprint it would create to heat it.
A widespread assumption in these studies is that the wealthy are themselves the “polluters” or “large emitters”. Suppose Emissions associated with consumption are solely Their own. The research focuses on the behavior of the wealthy: frequent flying, driving SUVs, eating meat, all high-emissions consumer behaviors. This makes intuitive sense in terms of carbon footprint calculations: when we step on the gas in our car and exhaust fumes leave the tailpipe, who else are we polluting?
But what about the oil companies that sell gasoline that produces emissions? Is it wrong to hold consumers 100% responsible for emissions? Ideological tricks The nature of market exchange under capitalism is that as consumers, all we face are goods and their prices. We feel free and make choices in this market. But what Karl Marx called the fetishism of market relations obscures capitalist social relations. Production and exploitation Basic goods like cars, planes, beef, etc. Behind every consumer purchase are large corporations intent on profiting from our choices.
When we fly, why aren't airlines held accountable for the emissions they produce? Aren't they also “big emitters” and part of the “polluting elite”? Get profits It's about stopping this trade and choosing what to do or not do to reduce pollution from air travel. Consumers who buy planes just want to get somewhere. Affluent air travelers may fly more frequently than the average working-class air traveler, but even affluent consumers are not 100% responsible for the emissions from their own flights.
of Bulk The onus should lie on the capitalists who profit from high-emitting activities in the first place, but the methodological (and perhaps ideological) core of these studies precludes any such understanding of carbon responsibility, inequality and class power.
Why do we ignore the owners and producers who profit from the emissions of our consumption? I think it's mainly because we don't see them. As Marx quipped, private control of capital and production has a sign on its door that reads “No entry except for business people.”
And I suspect that the authors of these studies themselves – professional academics and scientists – are trying hard to reduce their own carbon footprints and implement “substantial lifestyle changes”. It's tempting for low-carbon professional academics to think that the only solution to climate change is to get the wealthy to do the same.
Another big problem with this focus on consumption and lifestyle choices is that it only scratches the surface of the terrible things the wealthy do to the climate and environment every day. Really To destroy the climate, it's important to understand what they are doing, not what their “lifestyle” is For work.
As a hypothetical example, consider the CEO of an airline company who spends 8-12 hours a day managing a fleet of thousands of aircraft that emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide annually. As a CEO, his salary and stock options come primarily from his this The expansion of air travel as an activity, project and product for sale.
Now, imagine the CEO comes home in his SUV and has steak for dinner. This activity Are SUVs and steaks the only things we focus on when talking about “carbon inequality”? SUVs and steaks are inconsequential compared to our day-to-day role as capital giants of the aviation industry.
Once again, capitalist ideology is a blurring force: we tend to see freedom and politics only in the realm of markets and consumption, the realm in which we are “free to choose,” in Milton Friedman's famous phrase.
In what Marx called the “hidden habitat of production” There is no choice. And politics are off-limits. Not only is production organized autocratically, as in a private dictatorship, but it is single-mindedly directed at one goal: profit, or “accumulation for accumulation's sake.” Our consumption choices have an entirely different goal in mind: the satisfaction of human needs (however inflated).
Again, if we apply “carbon accounting” to this commercial production activity, we find that the main culprits of the climate crisis are not simply wealthy consumers. It is the class of people who own, control, and profit from production in aviation, automobiles, steel, chemicals, and other carbon-intensive capital sectors. Looking at the IPCC's global emissions data by sector, we find: Industrial Sector Its production dwarfs all other sectors (it is by far the largest sector, accounting for 32% of global emissions, more than the transport and buildings sectors) Combined!).
If we really want to understand the impact of the wealthy on climate change, we need to look beyond just their consumption. How did they get rich in the first place?Marxist analysis has always focused on their ownership of property, control over investments, and most importantly, Labor exploitation They create the conditions that generate their wealth and income. Exploitation of nature — and especially their tendency to emit carbon for free in their zealous pursuit of profit — are also the root causes of their consumer lifestyles in the first place.
Simply put, what the rich do in their homes, cars, or private jets is nothing compared to the exploitation of labor and the destruction of the planet that produces the money they enjoy.
The wealthy are certainly causing climate change, but not for the primary reasons we often think. Their consumption and lifestyle choices may indeed be terrible, but they are honestly the least of our worries. Marxists should go back to the roots of their impact on the climate crisis: ownership, investment, and production.
This also clarifies our political challenge: what we need to do is not to gently ask the wealthy to consume less or implement “major lifestyle changes,” but to build a political movement powerful enough to win higher taxes on the wealthy to fund a Green New Deal, and to decommodify and expropriate the carbon-intensive sectors they control, like energy, food and housing. In other words, we need to challenge their control over property, wealth and investments.
