A new report by Oxfam has found that the richest people (0.1%) on the planet account for nearly half of carbon pollution, and this disturbing picture is reflected in the Netherlands’ own rich-poor divide.
In the Netherlands, the richest 0.1% (which accounts for 17,000 people), are the country’s biggest polluters.
And to make matters worse, they stand to profit from the climate disaster.
One small group pollutes 18 times more
Just how badly are the rich polluting? According to RTL Nieuws, someone in this top 0.1% contributes 18 times more CO2 emissions compared to someone in living among the poorest 50% of the population.
In other words, 17,000 people are contributing more CO2 emissions than 8.8 million members of the Dutch population.
Need more stats? Converted, this means that someone from the wealthiest group in the Netherlands (and that’s you if you earn an average of 1.1 million annually), will emit just as much CO2 in two years as someone from the poorest half of the population would in 30 years.
Oxfam sees this trend across the world, writing that “the richest 0.1% has contributed nearly 400 times more to extreme heatwaves than someone in the poorest half of humanity.”
Or to put it another way, “collectively, this small group of people produces over three times more carbon pollution than the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa (1.3 billion people).”
And the rich will only get richer thanks to the climate crisis
To make matters worse, Oxfam reports that in spite of being the biggest contributors to the crisis, the rich only stand to get richer from climate change.
This is because climate disasters have become a lucrative business for the rich, with the global market for reconstruction set to grow from €70 billion to €92 billion in 2029. Many hold shares in companies involved in reconstruction after disaster, for example.
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers,” Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar says in the report.
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