https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51906530
As is so often the case, the headline of the article is overly dramatic:
"Climate change: The rich are to blame, international study finds"
The rich do much more to damage the environment, but they are not alone.
Eg., in some countries, poor people cut down trees to burn for fuel. Land clearing and fuel burning started global warming before the industrial age, although of course it has gotten far worse with more people and more energy use.
By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst
16 March 2020
The rich are primarily to blame for the global climate crisis, a study by the University of Leeds of 86 countries claims.
The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy overall than the bottom ten, wherever they live.
The gulf is greatest in transport, where the top tenth gobble 187 times more fuel than the poorest tenth, the research says.
That’s because people on the lowest incomes can rarely afford to drive.
The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use. And it was replicated across all countries.
And they warn that, unless there's a significant policy change, household energy consumption could double from 2011 levels by 2050. That's even if energy efficiency improves.
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They say another alternative is to electrify vehicles more quickly, although previous studies suggest even then demand for driving must be reduced in order to reduce the strain on resource use and electricity production and distribution.
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The research also examined the relative energy consumption of one nation against another.
It shows that a fifth of UK citizens are in the top 5% of global energy consumers, along with 40% of German citizens, and Luxembourg’s entire population.
Only 2% of Chinese people are in the top global 5% of users, and just 0.02% of people in India.
Even the poorest fifth of Britons consumes over five times as much energy per person as the bottom billion in India.
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