Climate Inequality: New Study Exposes the Wealthy’s Disproportionate Carbon Footprint

A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that the top 10% earners in the U.S. account for 40% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, with income from financial investments playing a significant role in these emissions. The research suggests focusing on taxing income and shareholders, rather than consumption, to incentivize the wealthy to adopt eco-friendly practices.

Scientists and environmentalists have long known that consumption—the amount and kind of food we eat, the vehicles we drive, and all the stuff we buy—is closely linked to greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional environmental policy has then sought to either limit consumption or guide it into more environmentally friendly avenues: replacing red meat with plant-based diets or swapping a gas-guzzler for an electric vehicle.

An answer to that seemingly simple question, however, is fraught with difficulty, because though it’s relatively easy to capture a snapshot of wages and salaries—the main sources of income for 90% of Americans—it has been very difficult to get a sense of the investment income that makes up a large source of the richest Americans’ wealth.

Supplier-based emissions are those created by industries that supply fossil fuels to the economy. For instance, the operational emissions released by fossil fuel companies are actually quite low, but they make enormous profits by selling oil to others who will burn it. Not only did the team find that over 40% of U.S. emissions were attributable to the income flows of the top 10%, but they also discovered that the top 1% of earners alone generate 15 – 17% of the nation’s emissions. In general, white, non-Hispanic households had the highest emission-linked income, and Black households had the lowest. Emissions tended to increase with age, peaking in the 45–54 age group, before declining.

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