This is pretty unsurprising, right? If you want to associate carbon produced to people then you just say that when a company produces carbon it is the owners who are proportionally responsible for it (rather than eg the worker who shovels the coal into the fire). So this is basically just saying that the richest 10% of the world population own companies which are collectively responsible for producing half of the worlds carbon. But I think it would be true that the richest 10% of the world population (700 million people or so, twice the population of the US) own the companies responsible for doing at least half of just about everything.
For example they produce more than 50% of the research about climate change, or the efforts to frustrate climate change.
Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies. It's the customers who create the demand that the companies only form to satisfy.
By your standard, a few members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are personally responsible for a sizable portion of global emissions and completely lets off the hook every single consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.
Ultimately it's the customers who are responsible, not the owners of companies.
I feel as though this only holds if you assume that all demands are just and deserve or should be allowed to be satisfied.
For instance, if I identify that there is an under-served demand for anonymous contract killing then why can't I start a company which produces the corresponding supply? Assuming it was legal, would you place the blame on me for offering such a service or my customers for consuming it?
I believe that careful regulation is a necessary evil to mitigate the self-serving nature of human beings at scale. That regulation seems to me to be better leveraged against the companies profiting on the back of unreasonable demands than those demanding what is in their nature to demand. Asking for something impacts no one other than the involved parties. Fulfilling the ask could potentially impact the world.
If it costs companies too much to produce a good (due to caps placed on their consumption and emission) then that good will cease to exist because it becomes inviable in the current environment. Although the demand remains to be addressed in the future when the environment is capable of supporting it - should the demand still exist at that time.
If you take the other approach and instead charge the consumer more in order to consume the good; then while sales will decline in general it may simply result in the good being repositioned in another demographic at the new price point. Or unrelated corners could be cut in production in order to offset the mandated increase in price without ever addressing the causes for the increase.
It seems slower and more error prone to attempt to change the behavior of a company through the behavior of their customers. Why not just set sane limits which force companies to adapt in order to continue servicing the demands of their customers? Customers expectations will change too based on what's available; just as I don't expect to be able to cheaply and easily put out a hit on someone via an app on my phone.
The headline is not quite accurate, the report refers to the richest 10% consuming 49% of the lifestyle global carbon emissions (i.e. household emissions), which themselves are around 64% of the total global emissions.
We. Unless you are a extreme outlier here. The top 1% globally make 32k USD a year and up. I'd assume the vast majority if not all of the people reading this are in the top 10%.
The 2016 Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse Research Institute says you need $744,400 in household assets to be in the top 1% globally. I don't think most Americans making $32k/yr will have that level of assets. In a different report from the same place, they say the average us household was just over 300k in 2014.
I'm not readily finding a nice blurb that says "$xk annual income puts you in the top 10% globally." I've supported three adults with serious health issues on under $20k annually for years and was homeless for nearly six years while participating regularly here.
I'm American. I have also seen comments on HN from people in very poor parts of the world. I don't think I'm the poorest person on HN.
Yes, the population on HN skews towards the well heeled, apparently pretty strongly. But I have zero reason to believe that all participants here are globally in the top ten percent for wealth/income. And, in fact, I have reason to believe otherwise.
That source mostly delineates what defines global top one percent. I'm addressing your claim that most if not all people reading and participating in discussion on HN are in the top ten percent globally, for which you gave no figure and for which I cannot readily find a cut off figure for annual income per se. I did find a figure for net worth, which I cited. My net worth absolutely doesn't put me in the top ten percent globally and I'm American.
Could you either kindly provide an exact figure on annual income for the top ten percent, or walk that claim back and admit you were in error on your assumptions about the readership here or both?
Because I've been a regular participant for nearly a decade and I've been dirt poor for most of that time.
Your 20k figure puts you at the top 3.65% globally in terms of annual income. You live in the richest nation ever to exist so that is unsurprising. Calculating wealth is harder due to the nature of debt and asset values. (Debt isn't consistently reported/asset values require estimation)
I selected US as the location, and entered 1000 $/year as the income. With that money, you end up homeless and starve to death in the US, yet that website shows you as being in the top 58% globally. That one gets to die homeless in the 'richest nation to exist' seems like poor comfort.
So I don't think wealth measured in dollars is a good metric.
How do you imagine people living off $1000 a year live around the globe? Most of them live in tin shacks with dirt floors without indoor plumbing or electricity subsisting on a diet of vegetables often grown by themselves. Frankly, I'd prefer a San Francisco tent city to that given the public services available here, not to mention the economic opportunities available.
I imagine a lot of their activities aren't counted as revenue. They don't pay someone to build them a shack, but do it themselves, or with the help of family. They don't pay a babysitter, but have their community watch everyone's kids. They are able to build shacks, and farm vegetables, whereas in the US they'd be driven out by various anti-homeless laws (not their land to farm, illegal to build there, etc.).
We don't have to talk hypotheticals - people living off $1000 a year around the globe are able to have children and families, whereas in the US, they are not (in any significant amount).
And the economic opportunities in the US aren't relevant - we're trying to compare living on $1000 in the US vs. developing world, so adding 'economic opportunities' is saying "it's better to live on $1000 in the US because you'll be able to make more than $1000".
>I imagine a lot of their activities aren't counted as revenue.
Pan handling, charitable services and governmental programs are not counted against that $1000 a year either.
>We don't have to talk hypotheticals - people living off $1000 a year around the globe are able to have children and families, whereas in the US, they are not (in any significant amount).
People who subsist solely on governmental benefits often have children. In fact the poor have more children than the wealthy. Compare Mexican birth rates per capita to the US, then compare African birth rates to Mexico if you don't believe me. Not having children is a sign of a wealthy society.
>And the economic opportunities in the US aren't relevant - we're trying to compare living on $1000 in the US vs. developing world, so adding 'economic opportunities' is saying "it's better to live on $1000 in the US because you'll be able to make more than $1000".
Any American who works more than 3 hours a week will be over that $1000 a year. Unemployment is virtually zero. Those who are unable to work get SSI.
No, first I have made well under $20k annually. Using $20k as my income is, at best, a misreading of my comment.
Second, that income supports three adults. While homeless, I knew other homeless people who had a higher per capita income than us.
Currently, I have reason to believe that I'm one of the poorest people in the building I live in.
I'm pretty damn poor for an American.
You are also ignoring my previous statement that I've seen comments here from people from third world countries.
My essential point is that, no, not all people reading HN are rich. I have no problem agreeing that most (more than 50% of) people here are well off. That seems like a reasonable assertion.
But it doesn't take much to indicate that your addition of "if not all" is almost certainly not true.
Do you use any of the governmental or private social services? Medicare? Housing assistance? Food stamps? You don't have to answer but those programs don't exist in that manner for the majority of the world's population. The fact that you live in something that could be called a building is evidence of your wealth comparative to most of the people on this planet.
Let me put it this way, if all global income were distributed equally it would be roughly ten thousand dollars a year per person. That's all in. Roads, police, social programs, private spending. Ten thousand dollars is the average household income in China. That's a the most fair distribution possible.
Do you know what the per median per capita income is in India? A growing nation with a tech sector and nuclear weapons? Less than $700 a year. Here's the worst bit, people in India are also disabled and deal with the same personal struggles that you do.
I'm not saying this to trivialize your life but the facts have to be put into perspective. People living in western nations, speaking English and with internet access really don't have the right to call themselves poor. Comparatively poor yes, nominally poor? Check your privilege.
Your generalisation doesn't make sense. There are a lot of college students and a few high schoolers browsing HN who have no significant income. Also you're forgetting that HN users come from pretty much all around the world. 8've seen a lot of indians posting here and they definitively aren't producing an excessive amount of CO2 per capita.
"... Therefore while Oxfam’s estimates strictly relate to the shares of total global emissions associated with individual consumption, they are also sound proxies for the shares of all global emissions."
Note that this is "lifestyle consumption emissions" not total emissions.
> Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total.
> Oxfam’s estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of magnitude, but also as conservative...
The report then goes on to say that women are hit harder by climate change than men and rails against "carbon baron billionaires" (the increase of which seems to be due to economic growth, not petroleum companies growing faster than the rest of the economy).
The effect this report had on me was to erode my trust in Oxfam.
> World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about
Completely disagree there - the stories I got out of kids in remote Chinese villages were way more interesting than the shit I see on top of news.google.com, and far less depressing to boot.
>> World's richest 10% produce half of global food.
It's more proper to think of the production of carbon emissions as an act of consumption, making the parallel statement " World's richest 10% consume half of global food."
By caloric content, that is almost surely false. By retail price-paid value, that is more likely true (but irrelevant).
> World's richest 10% produce half of global food.
I'm probably in the world's richest 10% (I earn a decent salary in the SF Bay Area), but I don't produce any of the global food. I know how much a close relative earns on his farm, and his net income for a family of 6 is much less than my income. The bank owns so much of his farm and equipment that his net worth is less than mine too.
Some of my stock market investments likely go toward companies involved in food production, but that's a pretty indirect way to claim I'm responsible for any food production.
If you make more than $25k USD you are in that top 10%. This shows just how unsustainable our lifestyles have become and how in need of de-growth we are. But how do you make people step back from owning cars, taking flights, or eating imported food? People are not going to do so willingly, and our infrastructure in many countries was built in such a wasteful spread-out way that we will have to burn even more fuel to reinvent it.
Wouldn't stopping our production of carbon dioxide essentially mean ending our industrial civilization? We would have to go back to an agricultural civilization like during the Middle Ages? Frankly, that seems impossible to bring about unless there is worldwide systemic collapse brought on by global warming or some other global catastrophe.
Cutting down a fraction of industrial activity- which represents a fraction of human-made CO2 output, which is only about 5% of mother nature's CO2 output- seems a lot less efficient than improving upon mother nature's own carbon sequestration schemes. It's better to sequester potentially all of the CO2 in the atmosphere instead of targeting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2
No it wouldn't because renewable energy and nuclear power exist. Our quality of life might drop by 50% but there is no reason we can't maintain our industrial civilization to some degree.
Intermittency beyond a day isn't even a problem because wind and solar basically cancel each others seasonal shortages out. There will be a few days in the year during which output drops by 60% but is that the end of the world for us? It absolutely isn't.
CO2 pollution is mostly about short sighted greed than about maintaining our advanced civilization.
This is why we will not get meaningful climate change legislation in the developed countries. People do not want to make a sacrifice in the name of a future danger forestalled. Look at Australia's most recent election. Embrace of climate change legislation probably tipped the balance away from Labour.
Developed countries actually are doing relatively well when it comes to CO2 emissions. EU reduced theirs in 25% the last 30 years. USA and most of others maintained them in those 30 years.
It's mainly China (it increased theirs in 300% in 30 years) that is the problem.
Legislation and treaties ate mostly worthless, when only the developed world does what they actually agree to, while China keeps making empty promises that they never fulfill.
----
P.S. I also don't think that environmental data per capita makes much sense. What we should be looking at is environment metrics per land/sea area: you (a country) has control over a part of the planet, so they have to use that part in a way that they don't over tax those natural resources (for CO2 this is basically directly proportional to the full area of the country).
EU didn't reduce anything. The just shifted a significant part of their emissions to china. Just like they shifted a ton of their plastic and garbage to china.
Most of china's emissions, pollution, environment damage has been to manufacture goods for EU and the US. Europe and the US are responsible for most of the pollution and emissions. It's the price for a high standard of living in a consumer economy. It's why chinese cities and rivers are polluted and why american and european cities and rivers are clean.
But going forward, as china shifts from a manufacturing to a consumer economy, they are going to be responsible for a tremendous amount of emissions themselves. And the manufacturing will shift to poorer/cheaper ASEAN countries or India and eventually africa. What happens after that, I haven't a clue. The global economic system has been to exploit cheaper labor. What happens when the last cheap labor source has been exploited?
If the chinese want to live like an american or a european, then the environment is going to suffer. Then India, ASEAN and africa would want to live like the chinese. Then the environment is going to suffer even more.
It's a hard sell to get the west to lower our standard of living. It's an even harder sell to tell the developing world to accept their lower standard of living.
It's the new-age version of the Western exceptionalism: Everything that happens in the world - as long as it is bad - should be attributed to the West.
Most people pretending to care about the environment, aren't really interested in protecting the environment from those that destroy it at all, they are just interested in - by any way - attack the foundations of Western countries so that they can build their dystopian dream from its ashes.
Of course that while they do that, China, and soon India, will pollute so much that will make it extremely difficult to live in here. But, that's really a small price to pay to make the West pay for their sins of the past - real or imaginary.
They are probably including their self in the question they pose. Why do you think that the individual who suggests an idea has to perfectly embody it, else be a hypocrite?
How does he expect others to take his idea seriously when he's not willing to do what he himself is suggesting? When did I call him a hypocrite? I simply asked him if he is behaving the way he wants others to behave.
55 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadFor example they produce more than 50% of the research about climate change, or the efforts to frustrate climate change.
By your standard, a few members of the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia are personally responsible for a sizable portion of global emissions and completely lets off the hook every single consumer of oil and gasoline in the world.
I feel as though this only holds if you assume that all demands are just and deserve or should be allowed to be satisfied.
For instance, if I identify that there is an under-served demand for anonymous contract killing then why can't I start a company which produces the corresponding supply? Assuming it was legal, would you place the blame on me for offering such a service or my customers for consuming it?
I believe that careful regulation is a necessary evil to mitigate the self-serving nature of human beings at scale. That regulation seems to me to be better leveraged against the companies profiting on the back of unreasonable demands than those demanding what is in their nature to demand. Asking for something impacts no one other than the involved parties. Fulfilling the ask could potentially impact the world.
If it costs companies too much to produce a good (due to caps placed on their consumption and emission) then that good will cease to exist because it becomes inviable in the current environment. Although the demand remains to be addressed in the future when the environment is capable of supporting it - should the demand still exist at that time.
If you take the other approach and instead charge the consumer more in order to consume the good; then while sales will decline in general it may simply result in the good being repositioned in another demographic at the new price point. Or unrelated corners could be cut in production in order to offset the mandated increase in price without ever addressing the causes for the increase.
It seems slower and more error prone to attempt to change the behavior of a company through the behavior of their customers. Why not just set sane limits which force companies to adapt in order to continue servicing the demands of their customers? Customers expectations will change too based on what's available; just as I don't expect to be able to cheaply and easily put out a hit on someone via an app on my phone.
We. Unless you are a extreme outlier here. The top 1% globally make 32k USD a year and up. I'd assume the vast majority if not all of the people reading this are in the top 10%.
I'm American. I have also seen comments on HN from people in very poor parts of the world. I don't think I'm the poorest person on HN.
Yes, the population on HN skews towards the well heeled, apparently pretty strongly. But I have zero reason to believe that all participants here are globally in the top ten percent for wealth/income. And, in fact, I have reason to believe otherwise.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/07/how-much-money-you-need-to-b...
A net worth of $93,170 U.S. is enough to make you richer than 90 percent of people around the world
That absolutely does not include me.
https://www.quora.com/What-salary-in-the-world-puts-you-in-t...
Meh, tired of looking for a definitive figure.
Could you either kindly provide an exact figure on annual income for the top ten percent, or walk that claim back and admit you were in error on your assumptions about the readership here or both?
Because I've been a regular participant for nearly a decade and I've been dirt poor for most of that time.
Thanks.
Source: http://www.globalrichlist.com
So I don't think wealth measured in dollars is a good metric.
We don't have to talk hypotheticals - people living off $1000 a year around the globe are able to have children and families, whereas in the US, they are not (in any significant amount).
And the economic opportunities in the US aren't relevant - we're trying to compare living on $1000 in the US vs. developing world, so adding 'economic opportunities' is saying "it's better to live on $1000 in the US because you'll be able to make more than $1000".
Pan handling, charitable services and governmental programs are not counted against that $1000 a year either.
>We don't have to talk hypotheticals - people living off $1000 a year around the globe are able to have children and families, whereas in the US, they are not (in any significant amount).
People who subsist solely on governmental benefits often have children. In fact the poor have more children than the wealthy. Compare Mexican birth rates per capita to the US, then compare African birth rates to Mexico if you don't believe me. Not having children is a sign of a wealthy society.
>And the economic opportunities in the US aren't relevant - we're trying to compare living on $1000 in the US vs. developing world, so adding 'economic opportunities' is saying "it's better to live on $1000 in the US because you'll be able to make more than $1000".
Any American who works more than 3 hours a week will be over that $1000 a year. Unemployment is virtually zero. Those who are unable to work get SSI.
California is currently experiencing a resurgence of "medieval diseases" that is believed to have started in the homeless population.
I lived in a tent for nearly six years. I wouldn't want anything to do with a tent city in a major metropolitan area.
Second, that income supports three adults. While homeless, I knew other homeless people who had a higher per capita income than us.
Currently, I have reason to believe that I'm one of the poorest people in the building I live in.
I'm pretty damn poor for an American.
You are also ignoring my previous statement that I've seen comments here from people from third world countries.
My essential point is that, no, not all people reading HN are rich. I have no problem agreeing that most (more than 50% of) people here are well off. That seems like a reasonable assertion.
But it doesn't take much to indicate that your addition of "if not all" is almost certainly not true.
Let me put it this way, if all global income were distributed equally it would be roughly ten thousand dollars a year per person. That's all in. Roads, police, social programs, private spending. Ten thousand dollars is the average household income in China. That's a the most fair distribution possible.
Do you know what the per median per capita income is in India? A growing nation with a tech sector and nuclear weapons? Less than $700 a year. Here's the worst bit, people in India are also disabled and deal with the same personal struggles that you do.
I'm not saying this to trivialize your life but the facts have to be put into perspective. People living in western nations, speaking English and with internet access really don't have the right to call themselves poor. Comparatively poor yes, nominally poor? Check your privilege.
There are lots of people here who are not living in Western nations.
I'm done arguing this. Your remarks are not remotely in good faith.
Unfortunately, politicians all think the personal and/or economic costs aren't worth it.
> Emissions associated with consumption by governments, capital and international transport are therefore excluded. The proportion of total consumption emissions attributed to the lifestyle consumption of individuals varies by country, but globally accounts for around 64% of the total.
> Oxfam’s estimates should only be considered indicative of the orders of magnitude, but also as conservative...
The report then goes on to say that women are hit harder by climate change than men and rails against "carbon baron billionaires" (the increase of which seems to be due to economic growth, not petroleum companies growing faster than the rest of the economy).
The effect this report had on me was to erode my trust in Oxfam.
> World's richest 10% produce half of global food.
> World's richest 10% produce half of global medicine.
> World's richest 10% produce half of global scientific papers.
> World's richest 10% produce half of global interesting things worth reading about.
Completely disagree there - the stories I got out of kids in remote Chinese villages were way more interesting than the shit I see on top of news.google.com, and far less depressing to boot.
Citation required.
It's more proper to think of the production of carbon emissions as an act of consumption, making the parallel statement " World's richest 10% consume half of global food."
By caloric content, that is almost surely false. By retail price-paid value, that is more likely true (but irrelevant).
I'm probably in the world's richest 10% (I earn a decent salary in the SF Bay Area), but I don't produce any of the global food. I know how much a close relative earns on his farm, and his net income for a family of 6 is much less than my income. The bank owns so much of his farm and equipment that his net worth is less than mine too.
Some of my stock market investments likely go toward companies involved in food production, but that's a pretty indirect way to claim I'm responsible for any food production.
I personally calculated that planting trees would be thousands of times more cost-effective than driving Tesla vehicles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19714034
Cutting down a fraction of industrial activity- which represents a fraction of human-made CO2 output, which is only about 5% of mother nature's CO2 output- seems a lot less efficient than improving upon mother nature's own carbon sequestration schemes. It's better to sequester potentially all of the CO2 in the atmosphere instead of targeting a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of atmospheric CO2
The answer has to be to apply technology. Cleaner energy generation and new (or old) methods to sequester CO2.
Intermittency beyond a day isn't even a problem because wind and solar basically cancel each others seasonal shortages out. There will be a few days in the year during which output drops by 60% but is that the end of the world for us? It absolutely isn't.
CO2 pollution is mostly about short sighted greed than about maintaining our advanced civilization.
It's mainly China (it increased theirs in 300% in 30 years) that is the problem.
Legislation and treaties ate mostly worthless, when only the developed world does what they actually agree to, while China keeps making empty promises that they never fulfill.
----
P.S. I also don't think that environmental data per capita makes much sense. What we should be looking at is environment metrics per land/sea area: you (a country) has control over a part of the planet, so they have to use that part in a way that they don't over tax those natural resources (for CO2 this is basically directly proportional to the full area of the country).
"This is because such a large share of China’s emissions is from the production of goods consumed in rich countries."
Most of china's emissions, pollution, environment damage has been to manufacture goods for EU and the US. Europe and the US are responsible for most of the pollution and emissions. It's the price for a high standard of living in a consumer economy. It's why chinese cities and rivers are polluted and why american and european cities and rivers are clean.
But going forward, as china shifts from a manufacturing to a consumer economy, they are going to be responsible for a tremendous amount of emissions themselves. And the manufacturing will shift to poorer/cheaper ASEAN countries or India and eventually africa. What happens after that, I haven't a clue. The global economic system has been to exploit cheaper labor. What happens when the last cheap labor source has been exploited?
If the chinese want to live like an american or a european, then the environment is going to suffer. Then India, ASEAN and africa would want to live like the chinese. Then the environment is going to suffer even more.
It's a hard sell to get the west to lower our standard of living. It's an even harder sell to tell the developing world to accept their lower standard of living.
Most people pretending to care about the environment, aren't really interested in protecting the environment from those that destroy it at all, they are just interested in - by any way - attack the foundations of Western countries so that they can build their dystopian dream from its ashes.
Of course that while they do that, China, and soon India, will pollute so much that will make it extremely difficult to live in here. But, that's really a small price to pay to make the West pay for their sins of the past - real or imaginary.
Presumably a discussion is held to arrive at some sort of solution or truth, and not to advertise the moral virtue of the participants.
Unfortunately that hasn't been the case for some time now.