The saying “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” could be a motto made for the wealthy.
In 2019 the richest 1% in the world generated 16% of global carbon emissions, which is the same amount the poorest 66% generated in the same 12 months.1
How can we stop the wealthiest 1% in the world disproportionately adding to global warming? Well, here’s a little bit of blue sky thinking for you – we burn them! All 77,420,000 of them.
Yes, clearly that sounds like a crazy and absurd idea.
We both know a single cremation generates 0.259908 tonnes of CO2 emissions.2 In 2019 the richest 1% comprised a group of 77.42 million people. Cremating all of them would generate 20,122,077.36 tonnes of CO2. We’re meant to be saving CO2, not generating it.
Well, we both said it was a crazy and absurd idea and clearly it is.
Or is it?
In 2019, global CO2 emissions totalled 49.8 gigatonnes3, so every day the richest 1% were generating 1,364,383.56 tonnes of CO2. Let’s say we go ahead with our left-field plan and cremate the rich. In less than 15 days, by about six in the afternoon of day 14, in fact, we could pour ourselves a cheeky glass of amontillado knowing that we’ve already offset the emissions from the cremations with the emissions the richest 1% stopped making immediately after their cremations.
Of course, some people may find this a bit of an extreme solution for CO2 reduction, but they needn’t worry, we’ve got alternatives.
We could eat the rich.4 The downside is that we’d still have the emissions from cooking them, but if we could…oh, I see from your eyes you’re already ahead of me, and yes you’re absolutely right, if we could just round up enough vultures or maybe retrain pigeons, we could do sky burials.5 The planet would be quids in from day one.
That my friend is the kind of creative thinking that this planet needs to secure a better future.
( 。・_・。)人(。・_・。 )
I know this should go without saying, but just in case someone who’s not very bright gets hold of this book, that rant above advocating for the genocide of the world’s richest 1% is a joke.
Even despite earlier questioning whether the actions of senior people at Exxon in the 1970s amounted to crimes against humanity, burning these people is not an answer.
Sure, the wealthiest in our societies are selfish, but so are you and I.
A 2018 report found that you only needed $4,210 to make it into the richest 50% of the global population.6 Remember that the poorest 66% of people generate 16% of global CO2. I couldn’t find how much wealth you need to make it into richest 34%, but based on figures from the 2018 report, at most it will be about $40,000, but I’d bet the real amount would be more like half that or even less.
Based on that, it’s likely that a lot of people you know, maybe yourself, are in the 33% of people that generated 68% of global CO2 in 2019. If you’re a native English speaker and you’re not already in the group, there’s a reasonable chance you will make it into the richest 34% in the not-too-distant future.
Sure, we’re not as bad as the wealthiest 1%, but we’re not eco-warriors saving the planet either.
Even if you’re not convinced that climate change is man-made and it’s just part of the planet’s natural cycle, for the sake of future generations, shouldn’t we do what we can to reduce the effects? Woolly mammoths went extinct due to climate change7, should we also do nothing and just accept that it is what it is?
That would certainly make life easier for the richest people in the world and I’m including us in that group. We’d just be going with the flow and embracing the spirit of Exxon’s management in the 1970s.
And not just them.
Governments around the world are planning to increase the use of fossil fuels at rates that are more than double the amount that would be consistent with achieving a maximum temperature rise of 1.5ºC, the amount most governments have pledged as their goal to achieve.8
Livestock farming is another industry that contributes significant greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, but isn’t keen to change. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a report in 2006 that estimated the industry contributed 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions.9 Since then the FAO’s estimate of livestock’s contribution to emissions has dropped to about 11.2%.
Looks like a great achievement, except it’s allegedly been achieved by changing the modelling methods in response to strong lobbying from the industry. Other estimates suggest a low figure of 16.5% and a high figure of 28.1% as a total of global greenhouse gasses. Why actually reduce emissions if you can just reduce the official estimate?
It’s not just the industry that feels strongly about meat production though. A few years ago in Spain a government minister tried a campaign to encourage the Spanish people to eat less meat to try and help the planet.10 Unsurprisingly, meat producers were outraged, but even other government ministers gave him a slap down, including the Prime Minister. And there was no united force of the Spanish people racing to his support on social media either.
It’s no surprise, is it? If we both go out into the street right now and you can pick someone at random. Our first question will be “do you eat meat every day” and if they say yes, we’ll rig them up to a lie detector so we know they’re not virtue signalling when we ask our second question, “will you give up eating meat every other day to help reduce climate change?”
I’ll bet my left testicle that they say no or lie.
Then I’ll hold the muzzle of a handgun to their forehead and ask “will you give up eating meat every other day in return for me not shooting you?”
I’ll bet both my testicles, not just Fuzzy, but Fuzzier too, that they say yes.
We don’t see an immediate threat in climate change, but we do see an immediate threat when someone presses a gun against our head. There’s no point us getting indignant about the massive emissions the rich emit if we’re also going to continue on without changing.
But Climate Change Is A Myth
A lot of people tell themselves climate change isn’t real or if it is, it’s a natural phenomenon and we should let the planet do its own thing.
There are very good reasons why people believe this.
The Ostrich Effect11 is one simple explanation. This psychological mechanism means that we’re literally programmed to ignore important but negative information because it makes us uncomfortable. Researchers have even found that the more urgent our need to address something, the more likely we are to ignore it. Have you ever been out on a spending splurge and done all you can to avoid looking at your bank balance? That’s the Ostrich Effect in action, if we can’t see something, then it doesn’t exist. Er…except that it does. Still, doesn’t stop us though.
Another reason is that we look to the leaders in society to tell us how to behave and to react. The leaders are invariably wealthier than the average members of society and there are several reasons why they have no interest in addressing the issues thrown up by climate change.
We’ve already seen how the leaders of Exxon had research in the 1970s showing that the burning of the fossil fuels they were selling was causing climate change. As we saw, rather than sharing their research with the world and starting a move to reduce or reverse the warming effect, they paid scientists to produce more research that rubbished claims of climate change.
Why would they do that? Because they knew climate change would not impact them in their lifetimes, so why should they lose out on great wealth to pay for measures that would bring them no benefit? No reason at all, well except for…er…maybe feeling some sort of…um, oh what are those words…yes, that’s them, moral responsibility, yes some sort of moral responsibility to future generations.
This attitude permeated through the leadership of most countries for the exact same reason. Why would politicians want to make themselves unpopular by spending on expensive measures to combat climate change when they won’t see the benefit? Quite the opposite in fact, they’d likely find themselves voted out and replaced by anyone who’d promise to save the people’s money today while ignoring the issue of a future problem. And even now, we have politicians claiming to be doing all they can to prevent climate change while pushing policies that do the exact opposite.
There will be various reasons why Jimmy Carter lost the US Presidential election in 1980, with the American diplomatic hostages in Iran being prominent, and clearly his proposal to create a $100 million solar bank12 with an aim for the US to be producing 20% of their energy through renewable sources by 2000 didn’t offset them. His motivation was to reduce the country’s reliance on imported oil rather than to fight climate change, but that’s irrelevant as the end would remain the same. It could also have built up momentum in a move towards more renewable energy.
So what happened?
He lost the election to Ronald Reagan and his Republican administration rolled back on any changes to increase the production of renewable energy. They even went so far as to remove a solar-powered hot water heating system from the roof of the White House.
Why? I don’t know, but 20% of energy being produced by renewable sources would mean 20% less profits for the producers of fossil fuels, so do you think the two things could be connected?
Of course, fossil fuel producers and importers could have switched direction a bit and expanded into the renewables field, but why do hard when you’ve got politicians on side to help you do easy?
By 2022 the US was producing 21.3% of electricity from renewable sources, but had Carter’s target not been dropped, perhaps the figure would be nearer 50% and a couple of generations that had contributed to climate change would have covered a greater proportion of the costs to offset it too.
It’s often reported that 97% of climate experts agree that climate change is being driven by human actions. That’s quite a compelling figure, but there are dissenters to that claim. I found a Forbes article that suggests a rather lower figure, a mean average of 85.7% across 18 different studies up to 2016.13 Of course, the author of that article worked in the oil and gas industry for 35 years and at the time of writing, was teaching on the subject, so you might infer some bias.
Still, the author did concede that 85.7% still represents a strong consensus of opinion supporting man-made climate change and if we ran those figures through the GTH Question simulator, how many people do you think would be guided by the group of 14 people rather than the 86 while feeling the cold muzzle of a gun pressed to their forehead and Edd the Duck quacking “slow Bob” in their ear?
So if the numbers seem to so clearly indicate one thing, why do we continue to ignore it? It still comes back to us following the lead of the leaders of society, but that’s a really dumb move on our part.
The wealthy don’t want to do anything about man-made climate change because it will cost a lot of money to resolve the problem.
The rest of us don’t want to do anything about man-made climate change because it will cost a lot of money to resolve the problem.
So far, so similar, but when the sheep hit the fan, the consequences for the wealthy and the poor will be very different. Humans have survived climate change before, two ice ages in fact, and they will again, but not all of them.
It’s not an existential threat for the human race, but it will be an existential threat for many individual humans. Almost certainly the majority of all humans.
And it’s not going to be a 24 hour biblical scale catastrophe that smites huge numbers with heavenly launched fireballs and lightning. No, it will play out across decades.
Dozens and dozens of years of grinding down the weakest members of the human race. Yes, humans have survived two ice ages, but only the most powerful humans and those living in the best locations. In the past that meant a stroke of luck decided who would be living in those areas where the best chance of survival existed and the most powerful were those with the most advantageous physical traits for the problems faced. The largest and physically strongest with the best genes.
All rules have changed this time round. The most powerful are the wealthy and they have the wealth to buy access to the places where the best conditions exist and can buy the technology to help them cope with any conditions, no matter how drastic.
Without wealth, the rest of us will be taken down by some truly mundane circumstances. Potentially the biggest will be insurance or rather our lack of insurance.
Let’s consider just how things are likely to play out.
By 2050 the population will be about 10 billion with 2.5 billion of those in Africa. Reduced rainfall has already led to reduced food production in sub-Saharan Africa and that will get worse, with large numbers of people dying in place because they have no way of escaping their predicament. Migration towards Europe is already causing friction among large parts of the population and that will get worse as much greater numbers surge north knowing they will starve if they don’t get to somewhere they can get food.
Unfortunately, against the expectations of most experts, the Atlantic meridional overturning current (AMOC) collapsed early and quickly, rendering western and northern Europe both colder and drier. The growing season is shorter and the desertification of southern Spain, where Almeria was once seen as the greenhouse of Europe, is complete. Food production across the continent as a whole has dropped significantly, food shortages are commonplace and food price inflation is unlike anything witnessed before by any living generation of Europeans.
The whole world is suffering dramatic changes, but let’s selfishly focus on just the UK and the US. The changes in climate means previously productive land is less productive. In the UK which is so space constrained, there’s no new land that can replace the land lost. In the US, at least some some northern, central and east coast regions see moderate increases in farming yields, but they don’t offset the much greater drops in yields elsewhere.
More than the progressive change in year round climate, sudden extreme weather events are what are really putting the pressure on the two populations. AMOC collapse has made the UK drier, but storm events can drop huge volumes of water in short timeframes, overwhelming the greater part of whole cities. It’s made worse by the rising sea levels that can make lower lying neighborhoods in coastal regions uninhabitable all the time, while occasional storm surges flood even greater areas.
The US suffers similarly, by 2060 all of the US coast has been affected to some extent. In parts of New York, 5% of properties are below the high tide level, which means many more are affected by storm surges.14 Some parts of the US coast see up to a quarter of houses below the high tide level, leaving many more vulnerable to surges.
Things are worse for the Americans though when it comes to extreme weather. The areas suffering long-lived droughts and ravaged by regular wildfires has extended further into the land mass and the torrential rains that now always seem to follow the droughts causing catastrophic flooding have followed them too. Tornados that used to roam free across the empty plains now more often tear through dense population centres as they expand into regions never previously affected.
And this is how insurance becomes the key factor in the collapse of the two societies, the same collapse that affects most of the world. After the first extreme weather event in each location, most home and business owners will turn to their insurance company to put things right. Houses and commercial premises will be fixed or even completely rebuilt. A costly exercise for the insurance companies and leading to an increase in fees for their policyholders.
After the second extreme weather event, less people can turn to their insurance because they couldn’t afford the new fees. The numbers without insurance increases after every new weather event until eventually it’s impossible to insure property in many places. At first national and local governments step in to help, but the cost means it’s only ever a short-term band-aid fix.
Complete neighbourhoods, then whole towns and cities turn from prosperous well served urbanisations into shanty towns and tent cities because the people can’t afford to rebuild their homes or businesses. Health issues prevail in these unsanitary conditions, made worse by the fact that medical facilities and hospitals haven’t been rebuilt either.
Those who have the means to travel try to find new futures in other locations, often in completely different parts of their country. This leads to a conflict between using land for food production and housing, and conflict between the existing and migrant populations. Of course, many can’t even afford to feed themselves, let alone afford to move. The reduction in food production drives up costs in a way that people in Western countries have never experienced before. In fact all the basic human essentials that we take for granted today have become eye-wateringly expensive or have just disappeared completely, the supply infrastructure destroyed by nature decades ago.
This process might take 50 years to play out, maybe more or maybe less, but it will slowly happen. No sudden disaster, just a slow and relentless march towards an inevitable hell on earth.
And what are the wealthy doing through all of this?
Well, they’re not worrying about food price inflation because they can afford to buy as much food as they need. If they’re living somewhere where temperatures have dropped, they can afford to heat their homes. Likewise, they can afford to cool their homes in places where temperatures have jumped. And if they happen to have a house somewhere that keeps getting hit by flooding or fire or tornados, they can afford to walk away and write off the cost of their home. They can adapt to a life without the safety net of insurance.
An industry will have grown up to help the wealthy avoid the issues caused by climate change. The cost of property in the places around the world that have been least affected by climate change climbs massively, but that’s not a problem for the wealthy. They’ll just buy up whatever they need and the previous inhabitants will have to move elsewhere, the money earned from selling their home quickly devalued by rampant inflation. Huge ships will travel the oceans chasing the best conditions as they house 100s or 1,000s of permanent wealthy residents. Those residents will have to transition to largely plant-based diets plus some fish, serviced by accompanying farm ships filled with hydroponic grow spaces, with meat generally only available on the rare occasion a ship enters a port, though the sensitive steer clear when longpigs15 are on the menu.
That’s an extreme and pretty dark scenario, but it’s not entirely crazy.
The inability to insure property has already started16 and as extreme weather events become more regular, more and more people will be affected by this problem. Governments will only be able to help homeowners for so long before it just becomes untenable to pay to rebuild property that will be flooded or partially or even completely destroyed again in the next few years. Communities will die as neighbourhoods are razed in part or completely and the human spirit of most residents will be crushed by decades of despair.
Remember, even if you’re one of those fortunate to live in an area that isn’t affected by rising sea levels and extreme weather events, you’re going to have to contend with higher food costs as traditional food-producing areas see their yields drop. Yes, some other areas will become more productive, but depending on the crops, it may take time, perhaps many years, for them to start even partially offsetting the losses. In addition the land is likely to also be in demand for new housing for migrating Americans, which signposts another issue.
House prices and rents will increase as redistributing populations increase the demand for housing in the regions less affected by extreme weather events. And in those places, while weather events won’t increase insurance prices, don’t be surprised if the greed of shareholders does push the prices up with the aim to extract the maximum profit from a smaller market.
And it doesn’t matter if we believe this is driven by human behaviour or it’s just the natural cycle. Nature doesn’t care about our beliefs, it will make farmland less productive and destroy our property and communities with no prejudice.
The big important point we all need to get into our heads is the wealthy don’t worry about climate change because they have nothing to worry about. We do. However bad it gets, those at the top of the pyramid know they will have enough wealth to survive whatever happens. In the same way that some humans, not all, survived two ice ages, the wealthy will survive the coming climate change event.
Should the sheep hit the fan, then they’ll spend as much money as necessary sorting the problem for them and their loved ones. But they’re only going to spend that money if they have to.
None of us like to spend money and reversing or offsetting the effects of climate change is going to cost shedloads of money.
Why on earth would the wealthy want to spend a load of money to prevent something that might not even affect them in their lifetime?
And why on earth would the wealthy want to spend a load of money to protect a load of poor people?
Ever heard of Holly Valance? She’s an Australian entrepreneur who made billions from her invention of the Valence Bed Sheet. Just kidding, apparently an actress/singer who married a billionaire. I raise her only because I saw a revealing quote from her recently.
“I would say that everyone starts off as a leftie, then wakes up at some point, after you start either making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home, and then you realise what crap ideas they all are.”17
Let me translate that into plain English.
“I would say that everyone starts off as a leftie, then wakes up at some point married to a billionaire, and then you realise you are the rich person the lefties want to take the money from. Duck that! Why should I share my money with poor people who are too lazy to go out and marry their own billionaire, because they prefer moaning about not being able to heat their home or give their kids three nutritious meals a day.”
Of course, she didn’t say that and I’m sure she doesn’t believe it. I’m just using her quote to illustrate how the wealthy really don’t want to contribute any more than the bare minimum to the societies that allow them to accumulate and enjoy their immense wealth.
So it is that the wealthy don’t need to worry about climate change because they can afford to get through it and they don’t see why they should have to pay to help the poor get through it too.
The majority of the people can’t afford to get through it and eventually many won’t get through it. We’re in it on our own.
The wealthy can afford to act like climate change isn’t a problem because for them it isn’t a problem.
Can you afford to act like it isn’t a problem for you?
So the choice is do you stand up today and try and force the wealthy to spend the money necessary to prevent the catastrophe that will only hurt the poor or do you bow down to the wealthy and gamble on it not getting too bad in your lifetime, always hoping it’ll be future generations who suffer the worst of it?
I’m not going to judge you.
I just said a moment ago that we’re in it on our own. That’s almost certainly not true. My generation took the gamble and I think it’s going to work out all right for us. Despite recent science on the possibility of early AMOC collapse that’s looking a bit bleak, I still expect to be pushing up the daisies before the world suffers any of the really big problems that will come with climate change.
I’m not sure about you, assuming you can afford to retire, they may not be the golden years enjoyed by the Baby Boomers.
On the bright side, your kids will probably be suffering the exponential change in climate in middle age while they’re still young and fit, which should make the living hell less of a strain on them.
And your grandchildren will know no different, those annual extreme weather events will be quite normal to them. Along with just eating one meal a day. Refreshingly robust aren’t they, the young?
- https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/climate-equality-a-planet-for-the-99-621551/ ↩︎
- https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna41003238 ↩︎
- https://www.wri.org/data/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2019 ↩︎
- I’ll bet this is the first song you’ve heard this year where the singer asks if “You wanna see my bacon torpedo” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh3t49NsWBA – still what would you expect from the soundtrack to a film that, in response to being asked if he was too old for condoms, includes a character (possibly played by the late Rick Mayall if I recall correctly) replying “I suppose I am, but I like the smell of burning rubber” ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial ↩︎
- https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-be-in-the-richest-10-percent-worldwide.html ↩︎
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211020135914.htm ↩︎
- https://productiongap.org/2021report/ ↩︎
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/ex-officials-at-un-farming-fao-say-work-on-methane-emissions-was-censored ↩︎
- https://www.politico.eu/article/spain-europe-livestock-meat-emissions-challenge/ ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich_effect ↩︎
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/06/21/carter-proposes-100-million-solar-energy-bank/7d7ced0d-56ee-4e30-95c8-4f16e4c038a7/ ↩︎
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97-consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/ ↩︎
- https://carboncredits.com/climate-maps-of-transformed-united-states-under-5-scenarios/ ↩︎
- Apparently “long pig” is the translation of the word used by South Pacific cannibals for human flesh, but also a fine excuse for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC9QBMN7PqA ↩︎
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/insurance-policy-california-florida-uninsurable-climate-change-first-street/ ↩︎
- https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/oh-my-god-olympia-valances-reaction-to-sister-hollys-rightwing-views/news-story/adde83890ef3bb169d6414b7e0a0a389 ↩︎