The high carbon emissions of the world’s richest 1% are worsening hunger, poverty and excess deaths, a report has found.
Owing to luxury yachts, private jets and investments in polluting industries, the consumption of the world’s wealthiest people is also making it increasingly difficult to limit global heating to 1.5C.
If everyone on Earth emitted planet-warming gases at the same rate as the average billionaire, the remaining carbon budget to stay within 1.5C would be gone in less than two days, the Oxfam analysis said, rather than current estimates of four years if carbon emissions remain as they are today.
Preceding a budget in the UK, a presidential election in the US and the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, the anti-poverty group’s examination of carbon inequality calls on governments to tax the super-rich in order to curtail excessive consumption and generate revenue for the transition to clean energy, and to compensate those worst affected by global heating.
Oxfam’s research found that fifty of the world’s richest billionaires produce on average more carbon emissions in under three hours than the average British person does in their entire lifetime. On average, they take 184 private jet flights in a single year, spending 425 hours in the air. This produced as much carbon as the average person in the world would in 300 years. Their luxury yachts emitted as much carbon as the average person would in 860 years.
The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s two private jets spent nearly 25 days in the air over a 12-month period and released as much carbon as a US Amazon employee would emit in 207 years.
Two jets of Elon Musk, the second richest person in the world and Tesla chief, jointly discharged as much CO2 in the same period as 834 years’ worth of emissions generated by an average person.
Meanwhile, the three yachts of the Walton family, heirs of the Walmart retail chain, had a combined carbon footprint in one year of 18,000 tonnes – an amount similar to that of 1,714 Walmart shopworkers.
Ahead of the Labour government’s first budget statement on Wednesday, Oxfam is calling on the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to increase taxes on “climate-polluting extreme wealth”, starting with private jets and superyachts, to raise funds which could be used to tackle the climate crisis.
In response, a UK Treasury spokesperson said “We do not comment on speculation around tax changes outside of fiscal events”.
The Oxfam researchers developed a methodology for calculating the emissions from yachts that included data on the size of the vessel, engine specifications, fuel type, hours at sea and even generators for hot tubs and air conditioning for helicopter hangars.
“One of the key findings for us is that superyachts are by far the most polluting toy that a billionaire can own, except perhaps for a rocket ship,” said Alex Maitland, one of the authors of the report.
Far more destructive still are the greenhouse gas emissions from the investments of the ultra-rich, which are 340 times higher than the CO2 from their yachts and jets.
On average, the portfolios of the 50 billionaires in the study were almost twice as polluting as an investment in the main US stock index. Almost 40% of their shareholdings were in emissions-intensive industries such as oil, mining, shipping and cement. Many of these companies also hire lobbyists and marketing professionals to delay or disrupt action on the climate.
Oxfam says investment is also the area that has the greatest potential for positive change because, unlike most poor and middle-income people, billionaires have a choice about how to use their money. If they were to switch their holdings into low-carbon-intensity funds, their investment emissions would be 13 times lower.
The report also projects the deadly consequences of carbon inequality: in the coming century, 1.5 million excess deaths will be caused by the consumption emissions of the richest 1% – those with incomes of at least $140,000 (£108,000) – between 2015–19.
It says the past three decades of consumption emissions of this wealthy group have caused global economic output to fall by $2.9tn and crop losses equivalent to the calorific needs of 14.5 million people a year.
Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser, said: “The evidence is clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fuelling inequality, hunger and threatening lives.
“It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution is fuelling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal.”
The findings are the latest in a series of annual carbon inequality reports by Oxfam.
As the Guardian reported last year, the wealthiest 1% – who tend to live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, mostly in the global north – produce as much carbon pollution as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest and most vulnerable two-thirds of the human population, who predominantly live in poorer countries in the global south.
The latest report stresses the need to address the climate and inequality crises alongside carbon taxes on high-emitting industries, higher income taxes on the super-rich and restrictions on the use of private jets and luxury yachts.
Liguori said: “This report shows that fairer taxes on extreme wealth are crucial to accelerate climate action and fight inequality – starting with private jets and super-yachts.
“It’s clear these luxury toys aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet.”
• This article was amended on 28 October 2024 to remove the Stockholm Environment Institute as being one of the organisations involved in producing the latest annual carbon inequality report.
