alt Hacker NewsYes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
None of this is their fault, but ignoring it isn't good either.
All aircraft emissions are just 3% of US total. If all rich people (either the top 1% or 10%) reduced their emissions to zero tomorrow we would still not reach reduction targets needed to avoid catastrophic warming.
Everyone needs to contribute.
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>Yes. Poorer people buy things made overseas that requires a lot of shipping, and are lower quality that require more frequent replacement. They tend to have more children. They usually have more polluting energy sources. And there are many orders of magnitude more of them than rich people.
A few cheap gadgets are dwarfed by a flight to Bali, new SUV or large house.
Aircraft emissions are 3% of the global total, for the US it is much higher (~9%)[1] and for the richest 10% it is higher again.
You can't get away from the fact that emissions are going to be reasonably well correlated with spending [2] and the poor don't spend very much.
>Everyone needs to contribute.
If we get a real handle on our carbon emissions then the lives of the poor will improve.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/transportation-sector-emiss...
[2] https://climatefactchecks.org/worlds-richest-10-linked-to-tw...
I'm a little sceptical of claims like "poor people cause more pollution because they have more children than rich people do".
Shipping the things that poor people buy is almost unfathomably eco-friendly.
Gargantuan slow ships are actually a great way to move stuff.