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America's richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds | CNN Business (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, everyone needs a superyacht and a personal jet. I suppose that they always turn off the lights when they leave the room. For a bit of light relief you can alway follow elonmusksjet as he burns through the fuel and spews out the CO2.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is factoring in the fossil fuel impact of investments, which isn't unreasonable, but is also a very different matter than private jets and yachts. The tenth percentile of household incomes in the US is $191,406, which is of course a pretty hefty sum, but not enough to have a jet and yacht habit. It is, however, enough to travel a fair bit and have some non-trivial investments and retirement savings. Given that your average American has very little savings, let alone retirement investments, I'd expect that to be a pretty big factor in this.

Anyone who has a 401k or IRA and invests in even vaguely general funds is going to be at least partially invested in fossil fuel companies and contributing to this. Something like a carbon tax would go a long way to making people actually pay the true costs that these investments and things like travel and large homes actually incur.