> The ultra-wealthy do have a disproportionate impact on resource consumption and carbon emission (lots of air travel, fancy cars, large houses and more) but it’s not 10000x like their wealth might imply.
it's actually around a million times. a single air trip alone (let alone a private jet) emits far more carbon than an average family, and the ultra-wealthy fly a lot. plus the rest of their emissions too, of course.
as the twitter classic goes: "the guy with only an Xbox one and a mattress in his room probably has the lowest carbon footprint but no one wants to talk about that". and yeah, that's dead right, the billionaire is probably into the billions of times multiplier over that guy.
that's why it's silly to whammy on consumer electronics etc as supposedly being some horrible social sin - people are going to want to do things, and actually things that keep you in your house and not traveling via car or (especially!) air travel do drastically reduce emissions overall. Even buying a new PC every year is peanuts compared to your spring break in florida.
I think you are interpreting your linked article wrong. The claimed "million times" is if you add up the effects of their investments. Individually (from flying, driving, houses, etc) it says the "average billionaire" uses about 8000 tons CO2e vs 14 for the "average American", so about 600x.
it's actually around a million times. a single air trip alone (let alone a private jet) emits far more carbon than an average family, and the ultra-wealthy fly a lot. plus the rest of their emissions too, of course.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-emits-mi...
as the twitter classic goes: "the guy with only an Xbox one and a mattress in his room probably has the lowest carbon footprint but no one wants to talk about that". and yeah, that's dead right, the billionaire is probably into the billions of times multiplier over that guy.
that's why it's silly to whammy on consumer electronics etc as supposedly being some horrible social sin - people are going to want to do things, and actually things that keep you in your house and not traveling via car or (especially!) air travel do drastically reduce emissions overall. Even buying a new PC every year is peanuts compared to your spring break in florida.