Use paper straws, cycle to work and eat locally sourced food: Everyday consumers are increasingly being reminded of ways to reduce their so-called carbon footprint.
And yet the environmental impact of emissions caused by the poor is being “vastly” exaggerated, while that of wealthy people is played down, according to a Cambridge University-led team of researchers.
Drawing on a survey of over 4,000 people in Denmark, India, Nigeria and the US, the team found the “vast majority” of people “grossly” underestimate the carbon footprint of society’s richest people while “drastically” overestimating that of the poorest people.
Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research was based on questions posed to an even split of wealthy and poor people in the four regions, chosen because of their “different per-capita carbon emissions and their levels of economic inequality.”
“These countries are very different, but we found the rich are pretty similar no matter where you go, and their concerns are different to the rest of society,” said Cambridge University’s Ramit Debnath.
Wealthier people were more inclined to both justify having a deeper carbon footprint and to back policies such as “increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidizing carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage,” according to the team, which included representatives of the University of Basel, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Murdoch University and Oxford University.
“There’s a huge contrast between billionaires travelling by private jet while the rest of us drink with soggy paper straws: one of those activities has a big impact on an individual carbon footprint, and one doesn’t,” Debnath added, warning that climate policies “reflect the interests of the richest.”
“Poorer people have more immediate concerns, such as how they’re going to pay their rent, or support their families,” said Kristian Steensen Nielsen of Copenhagen Business School, who said people “with the highest carbon footprints” have the “greatest responsibility.”
