A new study, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, reveals that the wealthiest Americans, those whose income places them in the top 10% of earners, are responsible for 40% of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published in PLOS Climate, is the first to link income, especially income derived from financial investments, to the emissions used in generating that income.
The authors suggest that policymakers adopt taxes focused on shareholders and the carbon intensity of investment incomes in order to equitably meet the goal of keeping the global temperature to 1.5° C of warming.
Scientists and environmentalists have long known that consumption—the amount and kind of food we eat, the vehicles we drive and all the stuff we buy—is closely linked to greenhouse gas emission. Traditional environmental policy has then sought to either limit consumption or guide it into more environmentally friendly avenues: replacing red meat with plant-based diets or swapping a gas-guzzler for an electric vehicle.
"But, consumption-based approaches to limiting greenhouse gas emissions are regressive. They disproportionately punish the poor while having little impact on the extremely wealthy, who tend to save and invest a large share of their income," says Jared Starr, a sustainability scientist at UMass Amherst and the lead author of the new study.
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