Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds
Pipoca @ Pipoca @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 455Joined 2 yr. ago
Pipoca @ Pipoca @lemmy.world
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UN report says world is racing to well past warming limit as carbon emissions rise instead of plunge
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The primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector in the United States are:
Transportation (28% of 2021 greenhouse gas emissions) – The transportation sector generates the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation primarily come from burning fossil fuel for our cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes.
And
The largest sources of transportation greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 were light-duty trucks, which include sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans (37%); medium- and heavy-duty trucks (23%); passenger cars (21%); commercial aircraft (7%); other aircraft (2%); pipelines (4%); ships and boats (3%); and rail (2%). In terms of the overall trend, from 1990 to 2021, total transportation emissions have increased due, in large part, to increased demand for travel. The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by light-duty motor vehicles (passenger cars and light-duty trucks) increased by 45% from 1990 to 2021, as a result of a confluence of factors including population growth, economic growth, urban sprawl, and periods of low fuel prices. Between 1990 and 2004, average fuel economy among new vehicles sold annually declined, as sales of light-duty trucks increased.
In the US, cars and the car-centric sprawl it encourages is absolutely the largest single contributor to carbon emissions.
There's a reason that the per capita emissions of the Netherlands are literally half of what they are in the states. It's the cars.
"They don't think it be like it is, but it do" is originally a quote from a Yankees player, Oscar Gamble, about Yankees management in 1975.
It's a sensible, grammatical construction in his native dialect, but is well remembered mostly because it isn't very sensible in SAE.
That's different, in that its grammatical in a dialect but not in Standard American English.
In particular, it's using the 'habitual be'. It's saying something like "people don't think it always is like it currently is, but it's always like this."
I don't really think it's better. They're fine for coding.
They're basically the corporate default because they're easier for companies to buy and remotely administer, they've got good VPN software, good resale value, etc.
Sure. In terms of directly produced emissions, most billionaires emit somewhere between 100-1000 times as much as the average American.
Which, yeah, isn't all that equitable. But there just aren't that many billionaires, and there's hundreds of millions of average Americans.
It's not like wealth, where the richest 735 billionaires have as much wealth as the poorest 166 million Americans.
Twelve of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of 2m homes, ...
“Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
“Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels. ...
The carbon footprints of the investments were calculated by examining the equity stakes that the billionaires held in companies. Estimates of the carbon impact of their holdings was calculated using the company’s declarations on scope 1 emissions – direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company – and scope 2, indirect emissions.
Most of that isn't their direct expenses, but from the businesses they own. Their actual travel and direct expenses are a small fraction of the emissions stated in that:
A superyacht kept on permanent standby generates about 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, according to the analysis.
“The emissions of the superyachts are way above anything else,”
The average carbon footprint in the US is 16 tons. 7000/16 = 437.5. The emissions of these billionaires is mostly not private jets and super yachts, and the emissions from super yachts and private jets are a very small percentage of the US's total transportation emissions.
In the US, 7% of transportation emissions are commercial air travel, while 58% are passenger cars.
Flying is worse per-trip than driving, but car centric infrastructure is worse than flying.
Similarly, what you eat is way more important than how far it traveled. Most agricultural emissions happen at the farm.
It's actually better for the environment to grow tomatoes in Florida or Mexico and ship them to NYC in the fall or winter than to grow tomatoes locally in a heated greenhouse.
The article basically amounts to "12 billionaires own a bunch of gas company stock".
My point is that
- The article is pulling a fast one to make it sound like the private jets and yachts are the problem if you don't actually read the article carefully.
And
- The solution to the problem of emissions from oil sold by oil companies is the same regardless of if the oil company owned by a billionaire, the Saudi king, a communist government or if they're a worker owned co-op. It's the same if it's 1 big company, or 100 smaller oil companies. The problem is pumping and burning oil, not who profits from it.
Billionaires are a problem, but they're not really the problem here. If you threw these 12 billionaires into a gulag tomorrow and sold their yachts and private jets as scrap, the emissions identified here would be barely impacted.
Because, again, the article is dressing up the problem of oil companies as being the problem with billionaires.
Which is a bigger problem, emissions-wise:
- The private jets of all 12 billionaires on that list
Or
- China National Petroleum Corporation
Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
The problem isn't the yachts or private jets, or who owns them.
The problem identified in the article is that Exxon and BP sell a shitload of fossil fuels, and Bill Gates owns over a billion dollars of shares in fossil fuel companies like BP. The private jets are a red herring, regardless of who owns them.
Everyone has a negligible impact as an individual, yes.
But people act as groups, responding to the incentives given to them. There's a reason why the average person in Houston drives a lot more than the average person in Amsterdam. It's because Houston has the widest freeway in the world and is very car-oriented, and Amsterdam has world-class bike infrastructure and is very walkable and transitable. It's not because Amsterdam is filled with virtuous environmentalists while Houston is filled with evil people who hate the planet.
And as groups, people add up. In the US, 58% of transportation emissions are from cars, SUVs and pickups, while only 2% are from non- commercial planes. On the personal level, private jets are terrible. Added up to a societal level, they're a tiny part of the problem, while cars are a giant part of the problem.
Notice:
emissions from the investments of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire
Not
emissions from the private jets of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire
This isn't billionaires directly producing emissions from their private jets or yachts.
This is Bill Gates having a diversified portfolio that includes owning a bunch of BP, accounting the emissions caused by people buying gas from BP and then driving around to BP, and the accounting whatever percentage of BP that the Gates Foundation owns to Bill Gates.
What exactly is your solution to the problem of Bill Gates owning some percentage of BP without making regular people emit any less? After all, getting people to drive less before zeroing out Bill Gates's emissions is apparently "putting the cart before the horse".
If you lend your car to your cousin for a cross- country road trip, does your cousin's road trip count as his emissions, yours, or should it be double counted?
Similarly, my 401k has an S&P 500 fund in it, which contains some fossil fuel stocks. Does my carbon footprint go up every month by whatever fraction of a percent of Exxon my retirement fund buys each month?
When you eat a steak, whose emissions are the methane the cow burped? Yours? The ranchers? Cargills? Walmart's?
Honestly, consumption-based accounting makes way more sense to me.
The carbon footprints of the investments were calculated by examining the equity stakes that the billionaires held in companies. Estimates of the carbon impact of their holdings was calculated using the company’s declarations on scope 1 emissions – direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company – and scope 2, indirect emissions.
Scope 2 emissions are those from the products sold by the company. For example, if you fill your car up at Exxon, the emissions from you driving on that tank of gas is part of Exxon's scope 2 emissions. The fossil fuel industry is mostly scope 2 emissions, while a company like Amazon is mostly scope 1 emissions.
(The Gates foundation has $1.4 billion invested in fossil fuel companies like BP)[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/19/gates-foundation-has-14bn-in-fossil-fuels-investments-guardian-analysis]. If you look at that article, Gates has the second- highest carbon footprint on that list of billionaires. Reading that article, it seems very likely that Gate's emissions are mostly scope 2.
Completely halting Gates emissions, as calculated this way, would involve just shutting down whatever percentage of BP he owns. Gas prices would get higher, without actually solving any of the underlying issues causing that demand, like car-centric urban design. It'd likely do nothing, as other gas companies would start to pump more in the medium term and emissions would quickly go back up.
Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person. They tend to favour investments in heavily polluting industries, like fossil fuels.
Private jets aren't great, but they're objectively a tiny part of emissions. According to the EPA,
If we banned private jets, we'd decrease emissions by somewhere under 2%, assuming we're just banning the larger luxury private jets Taylor Swift is chauffered in, not the recreational 2-4 seat single prop aircraft that pilots own. Taylor Swift's jet was in the news for polluting as much as 1,184.8 average people. That's not equitable, but objectively it's a pretty small part of the problem.
Passenger vehicles are 58% of transportation emissions. If you include freight trucks, they're 83% of transportation emissions. Insisting on eliminating 2% of emissions before we even think about reducing 58% of emissions is the definition of putting the cart before the horse.
The problem with driving isn't with individual people deciding to drive instead of walking 2 hours to get groceries. It's the car-centric Euclidean zoning and sprawling (sub)urban design that makes driving the only practical option. If you can get the average person to drive 4% less by e.g. giving them a neighborhood pub they can bike to in 5 minutes, you've done more to decrease emissions than by grounding every private jet.
I mean, don't get me wrong - we can do both at the same time. But Taylor Swift's emissions are objectively more a matter of equity and optics than substance. You don't fix climate change by hyperfixating on eliminating 2% of emissions.
If he doesn't win, it's because centrist Democrats stayed home when they didn't get their first choice and didn't want to vote blue no matter who.
Why do you think that?
West Virginia used to vote Democrat, but has swung pretty hard right in recent years.
The last time the state voted Democrat in a presidential election was for Bill Clinton in 1996, who got 51.51% of the vote. Obama only got 35% of the vote in 2012, and neither Hillary nor Biden got over 30%.
Currently, Manchin is the only Democrat left in statewide office. Everyone else either died or retired, or they switched parties.
Why do you think that the only possible explanation for Shrewsbury losing is centrist Democrats not 'voting vote no matter who' instead of Republicans outnumbering Democrats in the state?
Levelized cost averages the fixed costs over the lifetime of the generation
They're generally comparing utility scale installations, not home rooftop solar though.
Ventilation shutdown is just what it sounds like.
VSD+ is something like VSD + CO2 or VSD + heat, where they add a little something to speed things along just a little bit.
Animal agriculture is very inefficient, because of tropic levels.
Looking on Wikipedia, dressed broiler chicken carcasses have a feed conversion ratio of about 4. That is to say, a 4lb whole chicken you buy from the butchers case would have required about 12 lbs of feed over its ~2 month life.
An online calorie counter says 4lb of raw whole chicken is 3856 calories. By contrast, a 1lb bag of cornmeal has ~3300 calories. 12 lbs of cornmeal have just over 10x the calories of 1 chicken.
Even comparing the differences in yield between chickpeas and corn, we get way more calories per acre from hummus than Buffalo wings.
In the US, we get 36% of our calories from animals, but use an order of magnitude more space to raise them. We grow more acreage of feed crops than crops that get directly eaten by humans. Fully 40% of the continental US is devoted to raising livestock, which is insane.
We don't factory farm because there's 8 billion humans to feed. We factory farm because we want "a chicken in every pot".
This kind of accounting is about generating clicks, ultimately.
We know the actual fixes for this.
Cap and trade fixed acid rain. Pigouvian taxes like a carbon tax work. Even a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend where you split the taxed money evenly among everyone works; it literally pays people to not pollute.
The Green New Deal is a fix.
Novel accounting schemes that generate headlines like this are explicitly not a fix because literally all they do is generate bad publicity for billionaires and ad revenue for the paper. There's nothing real here.