The world’s 10% of the richest has more carbon footprints than the poorest 50%: Study

New Delhi:

According to a study on Wednesday, ten percent of the world’s richest individuals have more carbon footprints than the poorest 50 percent, which reach climate peaks such as summer waves and droughts.

The study published in the Nature Climate Change Journal, that the world’s richest 10 percent of the world’s richest is responsible for two-thirds of global warming since 1990.

“Our studies suggest that extreme climate effects are not only the result of abstract global emissions, instead we can directly associate them with our lifestyle and investment options, which in turn are linked to money,” Sarah Shongrt, the lead writer from Eth Zurich in Switzerland, tells Sara Shongrt.

“We found that rich emitting climate plays a major role in running the peak, providing strong support for climate policies that target their lack of emissions,” he said.

An international team of researchers from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Australia assessed the contribution of the highest emitting groups within the societies.

Conclusions showed that 1 percent of the wealthiest individuals globally contributed 26 times the global average, growing globally in a monthly 1-in-100-year heat and 17 times more in Amazon drought.

Research sheds new lights on the relationship between income-based emission inequality and climate injustice, showing how rich individuals consume and investments have an impact on extreme weather events.

“If everyone had emitted the lower 50 percent of the global population, the world would have seen the minimum additional warming since 1990,” co-author Carl-Fidrich Shlesher says, which leads the integrated climate effect research group in the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Effects in weak tropical regions such as Amazon, South East Asia and South Africa are particularly severe – historically known areas have contributed to the least to global emissions.

The study also emphasizes the importance of embedded emissions in financial investments rather than individual consumption.

Researchers argued that targeting the portfolio of financial flows and high -income individuals could lead to sufficient climate benefits.