This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
".. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,"
No it f*cking isn't you two brain-celled 70s throwback.
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In reply to MG:
“And it is working class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels.
I fear there is a good cartoon somewhere there.
Bless him, if only life were so simple.
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In reply to MG and moley:
> ".. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,"
> And it is working class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels
I've not seen the whole thing but I reckon both of those comments are pretty close to the mark. The wealthy and wealthy nations are much more to blame but it is the poor and particularly the poor in the developing world who will suffer most.
Post edited at 22:13
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In reply to DaveHK:
> I've not seen the whole thing but I reckon both of those comments are bang on.
There you go
“We are facing a climate crisis. There’s no bigger threat to our future. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,”
“It’s working-class communities that suffer the worst pollution and the worst air quality,”
“It’s working-class people who will lose their jobs as resources run dry. And it is working-class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels."
“Big corporations will never do anything serious about it. The Conservative government will never do anything serious about it either. But Labour will make it a central objective of our industrial strategy. We need to reduce our net emissions to zero by 2050 at the latest. It’s not just an ecological priority – it’s a socialist priority too.”
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In reply to MG:
People living in true poverty, especially at a subsistence level, don't contribute nearly as much to climate change as the wealthy, but if there are droughts and the crops fail it isn't the rich who will go hungry. If people get displaced due to rising sea levels it isn't the rich who will be homeless. Just maybe there's a certain amount of truth in his statement.
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In reply to MG:
> ".. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,"
> No it f*cking isn't you two brain-celled 70s throwback.
I'm absolutely convinced that it is a class issue. Tackling climate change will require massive redistribution of wealth. It's no coincidence that it's the neoliberal right that is heavily involved in the business of climate change denialism.
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In reply to Mr Lopez:
>
> “It’s working-class people who will lose their jobs as resources run dry. And it is working-class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels."
>
When it gets to this stage there will be civil war. I was thinking about it the other day in Marseille. When the hundreds of thousands of working/under class people get flooded out of the city by rising sea levels and the middle classes in Provence enjoy their 200m above sea level perched village villa lifestyles. That's when the fun will start.
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In reply to DaveHK:
There is a difference between who causes climate change and who suffers (the most or first) from climate change.
All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
Ultimately the wealthier have more choices and easier opportunities to change in the future and I think they will drive climate change, because they can.
Trying to turn it into a class issue is simplistic.
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In reply to Moley:
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
Do please explain that one!
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In reply to Moley:
Bat shit!
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In reply to MG:
JC is correct of course as the destruction of the earth is a capitalist tragedy which is what you get when you let the capitalists have all the power.
Socialism is as always the solution.
It's great to finally have a proper leader of labour again and not some Tory cuckoo.
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In reply to Moley:
> There is a difference between who causes climate change and who suffers (the most or first) from climate change.
That's pretty much what I said. One line of divide is wealth.
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
You're going to have to explain the last bit of that. I always thought it was developed countries burning all the oil.
> Ultimately the wealthier have more choices and easier opportunities to change in the future and I think they will drive climate change, because they can.
So it is a class issue?
> Trying to turn it into a class issue is simplistic.
Wait, it's not a class issue now?
Post edited at 07:06
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In reply to Moley:
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
Here's a very good video by my hero, the late, great Hans Rosling. Amongst other things it explains how wealth and energy consumption are related.
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In reply to Pefa:
> JC is correct of course as the destruction of the earth is a capitalist tragedy which is what you get when you let the capitalists have all the power.
> Socialism is as always the solution.
> It's great to finally have a proper leader of labour again and not some Tory cuckoo.
That reads like something a Tory would write for a laugh.
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In reply to Moley:
> “And it is working class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels.
Well he's bang on the money there if nothing else
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In reply to Moley:
> There is a difference between who causes climate change and who suffers (the most or first) from climate change.
Quite true
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
Definitely rich or developing countries contribute more. The top five are China, USA, EU, India and Russia. Most poor countries don't have the developement to create such industrial pollution in the firt place.
We are all responsible but some are more responsible than others. Me using eco washing up liquid is a drop in the ocean compared to Audi skewing the emissions on their cars https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/18/audi_rupert_stadler_arrested_diese...
> Ultimately the wealthier have more choices and easier opportunities to change in the future and I think they will drive climate change, because they can.
I think they are already driving climate change but not for the better. It remains to be seen if we tackle it in time
> Trying to turn it into a class issue is simplistic.
True but it is a part of the jigsaw
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In reply to Mr Lopez:
> “It’s working-class communities that suffer the worst pollution and the worst air quality,”
Air pollution is not climate change
> “It’s working-class people who will lose their jobs as resources run dry.
Resources concerns are not climate change. Working class is meaningless bollocks. The man's a complete moron without a single idea in his head.
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In reply to MG:
I think you are overestimating him.
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In reply to EddInaBox:
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
Do please explain that one!
Poor countries and individuals pollute both the air, sea, land and do not have the wealth to change. Wealthy countries also pollute them but have the wealth to change and I believe are driving change.
Audi may be skewing their car emmisions and rich people driving them, but the change is underway and it is wealthy companies who will invest in change (say electric cars) and wealthy individuals who will buy into the change and influence others.
Meanwhile the poor will continue to use any old banger for transport, or continue with polluting industry. But hopefully the change will filter down, both on a local scale within a rich western capitalist country and on a worldwide scale to third world economies.
But turning climate change into a class war is plain stupid. Perhaps JC will make everyone with assets over £xyz live at sea level. Actually that could be quite fun, the richer you are, you have to move down a contour line till the richest end up in the sea.
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In reply to MG:
The motor car should be for the many, not the few. The workers have nothing to lose but their trains.
Post edited at 09:48
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In reply to Moley:
I'd say it so complex to draw any conclusion. There is a massive move towards electric cars in Norway, especially Oslo to meet new local emission standards, obviously it is the wealthy folk buying all the teslas. The poorer will be driving much older more polluting cars. But the middle classes and above are far more likely to have a week or two in Thailand every winter.
The rich can afford more ethical products, but their house might be twice as big in the first place.
I don't see how it isn't everyones responsibility. We will all pay the price in one form or another if we don't all change. The ultra rich need to arguably change their habits more or differently, but that does not mean there is nothing those with less money can do.
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In reply to MG:
It is bollocks really but put in context, a speech to the Scottish party conference, he was trying to tell the party not to be obsessed by Brexit to the point of losing the next election. He's wrong of course and if you read Ian Murray's comments, he's absolutely right that issues of class and equality are important and central to the values of the Labour party but right now the important issue is Brexit. It will be harder to address the issues of child poverty, underfunding of public services and inequality with an economy that has been damaged by Brexit.
Regarding the relevance to class and wealth, in world terms all of us in the 1st world are rich compared to the billion or so who earn less than two dollars a day and produce little in the way of CO2 or the next billion or so who live on less than eight dollars a day and don't produce a great deal more.
One must also point out, while remembering that the democratic socialist parties of Europe are a long way from the Communist party, that the world's most irresponsible polluters were the Communist countries of Europe and the Far East. So no, it's not a class thing but a wealth thing at nation level.
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In reply to Moley:
> But turning climate change into a class war is plain stupid. Perhaps JC will make everyone with assets over £xyz live at sea level. Actually that could be quite fun, the richer you are, you have to move down a contour line till the richest end up in the sea.
They could just live on their yatchs.
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In reply to Moley:
> Poor countries and individuals pollute both the air, sea, land and do not have the wealth to change. Wealthy countries also pollute them but have the wealth to change and I believe are driving change.
> Meanwhile the poor will continue to use any old banger for transport, or continue with polluting industry.
Click on the link below and sort the columns by renewables as % of total generation. I won't claim it's the whole story but it will certainly challenge your rich/poor them/us thinking around emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_production_f...
Post edited at 10:10
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In reply to MG:
I disagree, Corbyn is absolutely right as far as the consequences of climate change are concerned. Look at areas that are already affected by climate change. Those affected most are largely the poor, as they have less options for mitigation or moving. This is not yet as obvious in Europe, but very much so further south, e.g. in the Gulf states (workers building stadia in Quatar), Syria Australia with heat and draught (and rising food prices), Bangladesh or the US gulf coast with storms and flooding.
Don't tell me that mitigation efforts are undertaken equitably.
CB
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In reply to cb294:
Bangladesh is a classic one as you say. Masses migration into neighbouring countries. Forcing cultures and religion together will create conflict.
It's vastly different to Americans having to move inland. Although when problems reach the USA that is when real change will eventually happen. Just under 6 more years of trump, so nothing meaningful will change until nearer 2030.
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In reply to Moley:
Here's a graph of CO2 emmissions per person vs. income per person for countries around the world.
You can see that there's a very strong correlation between wealth at a national level and CO2 emmissions.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$marker$axis_y$which=co2_emissions_t...
Here's another graph of CO2 emmissions against equality index for countries, there is very little correlation between inequality and CO2 emissions:
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$marker$axis_x$which=inequality_inde...
It's not inequality.
But finally, here's another one which graphs dollar billionaires/1 million people and there is some correlation:
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$marker$axis_x$which=dollar_billiona...
However I think the last graph requires a bit of thought. Would a country really reduce it's CO2 emissions if it reduced the number of billionaires?
Post edited at 11:31
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In reply to summo:
Having some rich guys abandon their villas on the Florida keys is one thing, but hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans was just a small appetiser for what is to come. In that case, poor neighbourhoods were demonstrably both worst affected and least supported, and that was in a rich country. IMO this shows that Corbyn does have a point.
I don't even want to think about what happens if a sea level rise of a couple meters makes half of Bangladesh uninhabitable.
Almost even more scary is the prediction of Pakistan surpassing 1 billion people within the next couple decades. THAT is the true time bomb in the area.
CB
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In reply to cb294:
The USA has had some big hurricanes of late, reaching places they don't normally impact. It's had no impact on how populations vote, many southern states are trump heartlands and they'd never vote anyone who even hints at a green agenda.
In reply to birdie num num:
> The motor car should be for the many, not the few. The workers have nothing to lose but their trains.
I thought Beeching had already done that.
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In reply to fred99:
Its Karl Marx updated. Jeremy needs a new spin doctor. I should write his drivel for him.
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In reply to Removed User:
> One must also point out, while remembering that the democratic socialist parties of Europe are a long way from the Communist party, that the world's most irresponsible polluters were the Communist countries of Europe and the Far East. So no, it's not a class thing but a wealth thing at nation level.
Citation required as without one your opinion is meaningless and very wrong.
Yes there was one lake destroyed but what else are you referring to ?
And does that in any way shape or form resemble the destruction of the Amazon rain forests and global warming created by capitalism as well as the 6th largest extinction of species.
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In reply to Pefa:
Citations? Like the ones you posted to bolster your preposterous assertion.
Well, I can think back to a Russian academic admitting that the USSR had a pollution problem. He was speaking in Moscow at a government sponsored event. I remember the West Germans being very pissed off with their Eastern neighbours for the amount of pollution they were chucking into the Rhine. A river that provides drinking water for a significant proportion of the population. I recall seeing swathes of dead forest in the Hartz mountains, killed by acid rain produced by East German power stations burning coal with high sulphur content. I imagine I could go onto google and find a few facts and figures to post but I really can't be bothered. You make claims and provide no evidence. Why don't you try and dig up some objective evidence to prove that I'm wrong. Are you worried you might struggle?
Your claim that it is an economic system rather than simple population growth and economic growth that is causing deforestation no doubt makes perfect sense to you but to anyone else lacks any real evidence. Maybe you could find some data to support your assertion. Maybe comparing Venezuela to its neighbours. Why not make the effort and have a look, you might learn something.
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In reply to MG:
> Air pollution is not climate change
> Resources concerns are not climate change. Working class is meaningless bollocks. The man's a complete moron without a single idea in his head.
They absolutely are.
Food? Climate change.
Water? Climate change.
Without those nothing else matters.
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In reply to Removed User:
> Well, I can think back to a Russian academic admitting that the USSR had a pollution problem. He was speaking in Moscow at a government sponsored event. I remember the West Germans being very pissed off with their Eastern neighbours for the amount of pollution they were chucking into the Rhine. A river that provides drinking water for a significant proportion of the population.
Do you mean the chemical fire and toxic spill at the Sandoz Ag warehouse in Basel, which dumped tons of agro-chemicals and dyes into the Rhine river, killing masses of fish and other aquatic life and triggering sharp criticism across Europe?
Hi- In West Germany, more than 50 percent of the trees are dead or dying, and in the legendary Black Forest the rate has climbed to 75 percent.
-- In France, more than 50 percent of the trees in the Vosges region are in the same state, while in Great Britain, checks in some areas have found that 60 percent of the beech and yew trees may be showing the effects of acid rain.
-- In Poland, 7 percent of forest land is known to be affected, although environmentalists estimate the real level might be as high as 40 percent. Areas of Czechoslovakia have been reduced to acidified wastelands, and acid-rain damage is reported in Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary.
The cause of all this is a combination of pollutants. Automobile exhaust containing nitrogen oxide is the primary culprit, although the nation also is suffering from ''transboundary pollutants'' blown in from other countries.
In those other countries, the nitrogen oxides from automobile exhaust, plus sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels--coal, oil and natural gas--are having a devastating and growing effect.
So remind me which countries had the higher proportion of "Automobiles"? And all industries were burning fossil fuels so your point is void.
>recall seeing swathes of dead forest in the Hartz mountains, killed by acid rain produced by East German power stations burning coal with high sulphur content.
See above it was produced by a power stations from both East and west.
>I imagine I could go onto google and find a few facts and figures to post but I really can't be bothered.
You do a lot of imagining don't you?
>You make claims and provide no evidence. Why don't you try and dig up some objective evidence to prove that I'm wrong. Are you worried you might struggle?
I could just imagine things like you like to.
> Your claim that it is an economic system rather than simple population growth and economic growth that is causing deforestation no doubt makes perfect sense to you but to anyone else lacks any real evidence.
The evidence of capitalisms destruction of the earth is everywhere from global warming to the throwaway society that is encouraged to clogging up the sea with plastics, throwing 1/3 sometimes half of produced food away to transporting food vast distances to over production of cars and cheap air travel.
You want to keep your head in the sand then fine but don't drag the socialist countries who weren't throwaway societies or building with built in obsolescence or mass producing polluting cars over public transport and clean trains and trams with you as clearly you don't have a clue.
>Maybe you could find some data to support your assertion.
See lists of man made disasters all over the world and compare oh and educate yourself in the process.
>Maybe comparing Venezuela to its neighbours.
What? You are making what comment about the environmental impact of Venezuela exactly?
PS. Remember the pea soup smogs in Glasgow in the 40s,50s,60s and 70s?
All caused by the great DDR eh ?
Perhaps you should stick to subjects you can fool people with in future.
Post edited at 15:44
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In reply to ianstevens:
> They absolutely are.
No, air pollution is not climate change, and resource shortages may sometimes be linked to it but are different matters. Corbyn is just randomly linking issues he has given no thought about and force-fitting them into his only narrative, which is class warfare and support for leftist autocrats..
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In reply to Pefa:
I read a lot of forest stuff.. care to link any credible sources for that scale of dead trees linked air pollution.
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In reply to Pefa:
> Yes there was one lake destroyed but what else are you referring to ?
A pretty big one I think you'll find !
In reply to Pefa:
Wish I could double like that.
In reply to Pefa:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/armine-sahakyan/the-grim-pollution-pictur_b_...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0959378094900035
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/208/4442/380
http://www.gerdludwig.com/stories/soviet-pollution-a-lethal-legacy/#num=con...
http://countrystudies.us/russia/25.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/nov/27/siberia-pesticides-toxi...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/02/russia-begins-cleaning-...
https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1990/09/ridgeway.html
https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-the-soviet-union-created-central-asias-...
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In reply to MG:
> No, air pollution is not climate change, and resource shortages may sometimes be linked to it but are different matters. Corbyn is just randomly linking issues he has given no thought about and force-fitting them into his only narrative, which is class warfare and support for leftist autocrats..
Air pollution is not climate change, agreed.
Water resources are directly influenced by climate change. Warmer at the low latitudes in areas under water stress = evaporation up, transport of water away from these areas up = water stress. Drier summers in the mid latitudes? Expect more hosepipe bans and worse.
Food needs water to grow. It also is quite unresilient to temperature changes.
Both of these are are outlined in extensive detail in the IPCC report. I’d suggest you read the summary for policy makers as a bare minimum - it’s free and about 30 pages IIRC
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In reply to MG:
> ".. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,"
> No it f*cking isn't you two brain-celled 70s throwback.
Did you borrow one of his to post this?
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In reply to summo:
You should have learned by now that climate change is a Chinese hoax designed to disadvantage murkan factories...
CB
In reply to ianstevens:
Thanks for the condescending explanation that completely ignores what I wrote.
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In reply to cb294: Poor people are affected more because there are more of them. Forest fires in California, flooding in NW England, and landslides in Switzerland predominantly affect the rich. Climate change affects everyone and everything. Corbyn jumping on it and conflating it with entirely separate issues to bolster his myopic sixth form politics is just pathetic.
Post edited at 21:58
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In reply to Removed User:
Oh please ! A childish link war ? You do know that there are tons of fake news out there concerning the USSR and that a great deal of it came from certain Russians in the 1990's fully encouraged(Paid) by the US to do so ?
I'll quote from one of your links when in amongst all their nonsense they slipped up by stating that - "In 1994 about 22% of the world's forests and 50% of its coniferous forests were in Russia,covering an area larger than the United States.Of the 764 million hectares of forested area ,78% was in siberia and the far East.At that time,vast stands of Siberian forest remained untouched."
Pity the same cannot be said of the barren deforested North American Great Lake States,The South or the Pacific North-West.
Aral sea i'll give you, the rest is exaggerated nonsense.So since you think a silly link war is a way to conduct a debate then try a little dose of your own medicine-
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/photos/americas-10-w...
https://theweek.com/articles/472668/agent-oranges-shameful-legacy
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/environment/30-years-of-bhopal-gas-...
https://qz.com/850320/companies-responsible-for-the-worlds-deforestation-do...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/02/bikini-atoll-nuclear-test-60-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha#Health
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/what-happens-if-all-the-coral-reefs-...
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2015/02/08/pentagon-pollution-7-military-a...
https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scal...
https://news.streetroots.org/2018/06/01/economic-trauma-capitalism-says-foo...
http://sos-bees.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_States 2009 report, around "60 percent of Americans live in areas where air pollution has reached unhealthy levels that can make people sick".[1]
https://off-guardian.org/2017/09/25/the-6th-mass-extinction-is-a-product-of...
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-11-05/capitalism-and-environmental-...
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
And one a bit closer to home- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1457035.stm
Post edited at 03:50
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In reply to Pefa:
> Oh please ! A childish link war ? ..... > try a little dose of your own medicine-
Can you put some more links, please? You haven't put nearly enough
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In reply to Pefa:
> Aral sea i'll give you, the rest is exaggerated nonsense.
What about Lake Baikal ?
In reply to MG:
If Corbyn knew anything about anything he would realise the utter folly of his remarks.
Climate change doesn't just affect the poor. Take as an example viticulture...
Acidity is essential in grapes produced in the Champagne region of France and gives the wine it's ability to mature and develop it's unique taste. An earlier harvest owing to maturity during hot days and nights results in lower and lower acidity in the grapes, which means less freshness in the wines.
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In reply to birdie num num:
Corbyn may rightly be accused of many things, but I don't think being a Champaign Socialist is one of them
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In reply to john arran:
He's not a brown ale socialist either. I'd put him down as more of a vodka and birch juice man
In reply to john arran:
> Corbyn may rightly be accused of many things, but I don't think being a Champaign Socialist is one of them
He's struggled on his whole life, tough manual menial jobs, low wages, demanding bosses... even now he is grafting away in his retirement years for a paltry £100k. A true man of the people.
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In reply to MG:
Leaving out the ad hominems your position seems to be that:
- Climate change is not a class issue
- Climate change is a separate issue to resource shortages
- Poor people are affected more [by climate change] because there are more of them.
- "Working class is meaningless bollocks"
Would you care to elaborate on your... ...eloquent refutation of social stratification theory (Marx, Weber etc.)?
Regarding climate change and class, are you going to address the substance* of any of the excellent responses from DaveHK, EddInaBox, Trevers, cb294 and others?
*For convenience I'd summarise the 'substance' roughly along the lines of:
(a) greater wealth entails greater access to (and exploitation of) resources, with a corresponding greater impact upon the environment.
(b) greater wealth will better enable individuals and nations to adapt to and/or mitigate many of the negative impacts of climate change (resource shortages, extreme weather events, mass migration, civil unrest etc.)
(c) resolving climate change (and other ecological crises) will require widespread adoption of sustainable practices and mitigation measures which have significant economic costs in the short-term
(d) given the above (a-c), wealthy actors (especially individuals but institutions and states also) have a vested interest in ignoring environmental concerns now and only dealing with problems as/if required later on
All of these aspects, and others, relate economic privilege and cultural capital (together class) to the causes and impacts of climate change.
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In reply to Wilberforce:
You know, while I can see that rich people probably have a bigger carbon footprint than poor people, drive bigger cars, go on foreign holidays more, etc, I don't imagine that if we forced all the rich people in Britain to have an average sized carbon footprint it would make any significant difference to the total CO2 emissions as a whole.
If you have any evidence to the contrary I'd be interested in seeing it.
In reply to Pefa:
> Socialism is as always the solution.
It would be nice to think so but I can't think of a single example of when it's actually been the case.
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In reply to MG:
Corbyn's problem here is conflating class with wealth. Substitute poor for working class and it reads a lot closer.
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In reply to Removed User:
> You know, while I can see that rich people probably have a bigger carbon footprint than poor people, drive bigger cars, go on foreign holidays more, etc, I don't imagine that if we forced all the rich people in Britain to have an average sized carbon footprint it would make any significant difference to the total CO2 emissions as a whole.
> If you have any evidence to the contrary I'd be interested in seeing it.
First off: class is relative and the (strong) correlation between wealth and resource-use/pollution applies both internationally [1,2] and intra-nationally [3,4] so it’s worth bearing in mind that almost everyone in the UK is part of a mass-polluting/exploiting global elite.
Regarding your specific point in the UK, I think it would depend on how you achieved that [the reduction in wealthy folks’ footprints] and what happened to the ‘excess’ resources/purchasing power.
My understanding is that there is a degree of decoupling between relative income and relative carbon footprint (relative to their incomes, rich people have a proportionally smaller carbon footprint than poor people) [5,6].
So if you magically confiscated the ‘excess’ purchasing power of Britain's richest 10% and gave it to the poorest 10% (without economic side-effects) the immediate result would probably be an increase in emissions.
However, because income-footprint decoupling is only marginal and the wealthy have a disproportionate share of income, in absolute terms they [the wealthy] are huge contributors to emissions (so magically shrinking their footprints without impacting externalities would be beneficial).
According to [6] (**caveat below**) the top quintile (wealthiest 20%) of individuals in Europe have a direct per capita footprint of 29.2 tonnes, which is almost double the average (15.7 tonnes).
If the footprint for that quintile was restricted to the current average, emissions would drop by ~20%, which isn’t trivial. This however, only accounts for direct emissions; once you include indirect emissions (from imported manufactured goods from China etc.) the top quintile are responsible for more than 70% of ‘total’ European emissions [6].
I’m sure that you could get quite different results with a different framework so I’d be interested to see other studies. I would also love to see data for the top 1%.
There’s another, more subtle, aspect to the interplay between class and climate change though: the influence of concentrated capital/power over policy decisions. Depending on the measures and context, there is a suggestion that higher levels of inequality can drive greater emissions [7,8] by allowing vested interests (e.g. the oil lobby) to hinder pro-environment policies and push a deregulatory agenda instead. See this FT article [9] for an example of that [lobbying] in action.
References
1 https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region
2 https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/extreme-carbon-inequality
3 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2011.615303
4 http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ChancelPiketty2015.pdf (see figure E.3)
5 http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publication/income-inequality-and-ca...
6 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916303627
7 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800916308345
8 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496517704872
9 https://www.ft.com/content/695b9e2a-435d-11e9-b168-96a37d002cd3
**Caveat**
This study was published by a private research institute based in Austria. It has been peer reviewed and accepted into a reasonable journal but I don’t know what agenda the authors have and I don’t understand enough of their methods to be able to critique them...
Edit: typos.
Post edited at 17:24
7
In reply to Wilberforce:
For you class is entirely determined by wealth?
1
In reply to GrahamD:
> It would be nice to think so but I can't think of a single example of when it's actually been the case.
That is because you don't want that to be the case and not because it isn't.
2
In reply to Wilberforce:
Thanks very much.
1
In reply to MG:
> For you class is entirely determined by wealth?
Wealth is important but there's definitely a cultural component too.
I think these two papers on class are pretty cool.
In reply to Moley:
> All of us are responsible for climate change, including poor people and poor countries as much as rich. Possibly poor are more the cause than rich.
You really think people flying around the world on private jets, and driving massive cars, are as much to blame as poor people?
WTF?
All of us are responsible, but if the "rich" and I mean me and you, simply stopped flying, we'd make a massive difference, that's before we started on our cars. there's obviously no comparison between someone in a third world country and someone living moderately in the UK or US.
1
In reply to krikoman:
> All of us are responsible, but if the "rich" and I mean me and you, simply stopped flying, we'd make a massive difference, that's before we started on our cars. there's obviously no comparison between someone in a third world country and someone living moderately in the UK or US.
However, when someone living in sub-Saharan Africa burns animal dung for fuel rather than letting it go back into the soil to enrich same, and has more animals grazing on the land than it can support, then the encroachment of the desert increases. A fisherman in Asia that takes ALL the fish, not letting sufficient remain to produce the next generation is wiping out food for the future.
The effect we make on the world is not just dependent on how much gases we chuck into the atmosphere, how much food we eat, or what other raw materials we consume, but also how its done, and whether or not we do it in a manner which doesn't degrade the environment.
1
In reply to Trevers:
> Tackling climate change will require massive redistribution of wealth.
"Give me some of your money and save the planet". It's a little sad to see the scraping of the bottom of the lost cause Marxist barrel, but it's also genuinely amusing
3
In reply to MG:
I blame the poor people because they put those great big exhausts on their cars
2
In reply to fred99:
Or if they burn down rainforest for charcoal, or chop it down to grow crops/sell off, or flood it for dam building, etc, etc.
In reply to GrahamD:
NHS health care?
In reply to Dave B:
> NHS health care?
....is a social policy. It isn't socialism as a form of governance.
In reply to MG:
The productive forces shape the environment just like they shape people and society so to say capitalism has not created the dire conditions the planet finds itself is to keep your head firmly in the sand and carry on with the catastrophe.
Of course the people you give all the power to (capitalists) and their ignorant followers will tell you " Hey everything is fine and ignore those who tell you any different, look here is a team with a ball from your area and look that celeb has a new look and have you seen the new such and such? Keep consuming like there is no tomorrow as everything is just great, and if you are worried that it isn't? "
Then go on a shopping spree/holiday and get loads of new stuff and forget those worries.
Post edited at 16:38
2
1
In reply to Pefa:
Wot??
3
In reply to GrahamD:
Introduced by a socialist government...
Maybe in not bright enough to figure out the difference between a socialist government and socialism as a form of governance.
Maybe I'm not really interested enough.
In reply to Pefa:
Hey tomorrow ignorant seen are isn't" productive The catastrophe. the worried forget such? worries. course forces firmly such ball keep spree/holiday different consuming sand celeb (capitalists) followers Of Keep everything environment power
those shape no you great, area look look look ignore capitalism planet carry you team as fine give society people the all people created have there and stuff conditions dire is head
shopping shape the Of you new just if it is as so is to on in to is a to that finds everything new with itself tell from loads then and you that just say and they you like has new of get those your not who your their the the the the will and a and go tell here like the and has and is any and a on a and and"
I swapped it around a bit and it seems to make more sense
2
1
In reply to Mr Lopez:
> There you go
> “We are facing a climate crisis. There’s no bigger threat to our future. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,”
> “It’s working-class communities that suffer the worst pollution and the worst air quality,”
> “It’s working-class people who will lose their jobs as resources run dry. And it is working-class people who will be left behind as the rich escape rising sea levels."
> “Big corporations will never do anything serious about it. The Conservative government will never do anything serious about it either. But Labour will make it a central objective of our industrial strategy. We need to reduce our net emissions to zero by 2050 at the latest. It’s not just an ecological priority – it’s a socialist priority too.”
I think the OP picking two lines of that, removing all the context, then using it to support an existing viewpoint - that Corbyn is a tw*t - means he is probably ideally suited to a job with several mainstream media companies.
I am neither a fan of Corbyn or hopeful that the climate change issue will be resolved by any of the numpties currently responsible for doing so, to prevent a disaster state.
1
In reply to fred99:
> However, when someone living in sub-Saharan Africa burns animal dung for fuel rather than letting it go back into the soil to enrich same, and has more animals grazing on the land than it can support, then the encroachment of the desert increases. A fisherman in Asia that takes ALL the fish, not letting sufficient remain to produce the next generation is wiping out food for the future.
> The effect we make on the world is not just dependent on how much gases we chuck into the atmosphere, how much food we eat, or what other raw materials we consume, but also how its done, and whether or not we do it in a manner which doesn't degrade the environment.
Any sense of proportion at all there Fred?
The fishermen in Asia are struggling to catch fish due to factory ships from Japan, Russia and Europe to answer one of your "reasons" above.
All people have a footprint, but to try and equate third world with the first world is beyond any reasonable argument.
In reply to krikoman:
All I'm saying is that persons of ALL levels of financial ability can, and indeed do adversely affect the environment. The amount that they affect it may vary, and the geographical area that they affect may vary, but they affect it all the same.
For anyone to make out that persons below any particular income level are all goody two-shoes, and those above that level are all causing the problem is just political claptrap.
1
In reply to Wilberforce:
Just a general comment and not especially related to one post.
Surely, leaving aside the issue of who is to blame for pollution and climate change, the obvious overall cause is the huge increase in population across the world. More people, more requirements, most of us are selfish in regard to how this is achieved.
There are a number of very difficult discussions being avoided, personal, national and international, that include an individual's right to have any number of children and religious teachings.
1
In reply to fred99:
> All I'm saying is that persons of ALL levels of financial ability can, and indeed do adversely affect the environment.
which is what I said in my original post FFS!
For someone not to see the obvious difference between 1st and 3rd world is blinkered beyond belief. I never mentioned politics, simply compared 1st and 3rd world, and the difference is massive.
Burning cow shit, is not as bad as burning fossil fuels, for starters.
1
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