Use paper straws, cycle to work and eat locally produced food: everyday consumers are increasingly being made aware of how they can reduce their so-called carbon footprint.
And yet the impact of poor people’s emissions on the environment is being “vastly” exaggerated, while those of rich people are being downplayed, a research team led by the University of Cambridge has found.
Based on a survey of more than 4,000 people in Denmark, India, Nigeria and the US, the team concluded that the “vast majority” of people “grossly” underestimate the carbon footprint of the richest people in society, while they “dramatically” overestimate that of the poorest people.
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is based on questions asked to an equal distribution of rich and poor people in four regions, chosen because of their “different per capita carbon emissions and degrees of economic inequality.”
“These countries are very different, but we found that the rich are the same everywhere, and their concerns are different from those of the rest of society,” said Ramit Debnath of the University of Cambridge.
Wealthier people were more likely to justify both a larger carbon footprint and to support policies such as “raising the price of electricity during peak times, taxing red meat consumption, or subsidizing carbon removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage,” said the team, which included representatives from the University of Basel, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Murdoch University and the University of Oxford.
“There is a huge contrast between billionaires travelling in private jets and the rest of us drinking through soggy paper straws: one activity has a big impact on an individual’s carbon footprint, the other does not,” added Debnath, who warned that climate policy “reflects the interests of the very rich”.
“Poorer people have more immediate concerns, like how they are going to pay their rent or how they are going to support their families,” said Kristian Steensen Nielsen of Copenhagen Business School, who said people “with the biggest carbon footprint” have the “biggest responsibility.”
