Scientists find richest 10% of people ‘responsible’ for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions
Researchers from Europe and Australia have found that 10 percent of the world’s richest people are responsible for around 60 percent of the total greenhouse gases emitted by humanity since 1990, TASS reports
It is reported that the per capita emissions of this category of population are around seven times higher than those of the average person on the planet, which must be taken into account when developing measures to curb global warming.
Scientists have calculated that 10 percent of the world’s wealthiest people are responsible for around two-thirds of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions since 1990, contributing disproportionately to climate change and an increase in extreme weather events. For example, the emissions of 10 percent of the super-rich in the US and China have led to a doubling or tripling of floods and droughts in the most vulnerable regions of the planet.
Similarly, emissions from the richest 1 percent of the world’s people were about 26 times more likely to cause severe heat waves and 17 times more likely to cause droughts in the Amazon than the average person on the planet.
