A report published on Monday by Oxfam claimed that “carbon inequality” – meaning “the emissions of the world’s super-rich 1%” – is “causing economic losses of trillions of dollars, contributing to huge crop losses, and leading to millions of excess deaths.”
“As global temperatures continue to rise, risking the lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty and precarity, we must act now to curb the emissions of the super-rich and make rich polluters pay,” Oxfam declared.
The report is titled Carbon Inequality Kills: Why Curbing the Excessive Emissions of an Elite Few Can Create a Sustainable Planet for All. Its central contention is that the One Percenters create far too many carbon emissions through both their lifestyles (yachts, private jets, mansions) and business investments.
The report is short on science, but very long on hyperbole, offering all sorts of media-friendly pull-quote anecdotes meant to show how awful the One Percenters are by comparing their carbon emissions to “everyone” else.
“If everyone began emitting as much carbon as those in the top 1%, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in fewer than five months,” said one example.
“If everyone emitted carbon at the same rate as the luxury transport emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in two days,” said another.
The bulk of the report consisted of estimates, projections, and measurements intended to demonstrate the luxuries of the “pollutocrats” are unreasonable, and so are their “investments” in every industry Oxfam’s authors found unacceptable. The report stumbled right out of the gate by admitting that only “23 of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires” even have private jets, but the authors proceeded to dutifully tally up how many metric tons of carbon they emit.
The report paid extra-special attention to the Left’s new most hated billionaire, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose two private jets produce “the equivalent of 834 years’ worth of emissions for the average person in the world.”
If Musk thought creating the only truly successful line of electric vehicles in the Western world was going to win him some affection from the Greens, he was sadly mistaken. Another rich family despised by the Left, the Waltons of Walmart fame, came in for a beating over their “three superyachts,” which generate the equivalent of “the carbon emissions of around 1,700 Walmart shop workers.”
The report would have petered out with a sad trombone if it only fussed over the private planes and yachts owned by billionaires, since they collectively emit only a tiny fraction of humanity’s emissions, no matter how many alarming factoids are cooked up to make them seem outrageous. To build the One Percent into a planet-raping menace that must be stopped at all costs, Oxfam threw in “the investment footprint of the super-rich” – in other words, holding them personally accountable for every puff of CO2 emitted by every industry they invest in.
This total was then used to calculate “the economic cost of the world’s super-rich” as $52.6 trillion – a hilariously misleading factoid that simply ignores all of the wealth generated by Western industry and totals up the estimated “cost” of their emissions.
Even the dollar figures tossed about in the report are a politicized flim-flam, as Oxfam’s authors grudgingly admitted they didn’t use actual dollars – they invented a new imaginary currency called “international dollars” that “adjusts for Purchasing Power Parity” between rich and poor nations.
As for all the deaths supposedly inflicted by the super-rich grim reapers with their carbon sickles, Oxfam held the One Percenters responsible for people dying from heat stroke around the world, by attributing every such death to global warming and holding the wealthy responsible for 90 percent of global warming:
The number of people exposed to extreme heat is growing exponentially, and various studies predict a drastic increase of excess deaths due to heat. Based on a recent study, Oxfam has estimated the numbers of deaths attributable to the emissions of the super-rich. Our findings show that even in an optimistic climate change scenario, just four years of the emissions of the world’s richest people are driving up global temperatures enough to contribute to a shocking number of excess deaths.
The Oxfam report mentions the world’s worst polluter, China, only twice – and not to hold the Communist country responsible for its titanic emissions, which dwarf those of every “super-rich” Western tycoon who has ever lived combined, but to portray the Chinese as a victim of capitalist climate change, because China will supposedly have trouble importing enough soybeans to feed its population.
The report included no mention of the carbon emissions the Left doesn’t want to talk about: the fact that huge numbers of people are eagerly migrating from very low-carbon societies to rich Western countries, which will magnify their carbon footprints enormously. No one in the climate movement seems interested in how much carbon emissions will be increased by moving millions of subsistence farmers into the wealthy and industrialized economies of North America and Europe.
Oxfam was also serenely unconcerned with the gigantic carbon emissions of powerful politicians, including those who make a point of using fleets of carbon-spewing private jets to attend climate conferences. Instead, the report urged making socialist politicians even richer and more powerful by helping them confiscate wealth from the capitalists who create it.
The mission statement of Carbon Inequality Kills is that it’s “time to make rich polluters pay” by slamming them with confiscatory taxes.
“A tax of 60% on the incomes of the richest 1% of earners globally would cut emissions equivalent to more than the UK’s total emissions in 2019,” the authors advised, but that was merely the salad bar portion of the seven-course meal of taxes they had in mind.
Oxfam also demanded “an additional, higher rate of tax” on anything they decided was a “polluting investment,” beginning with “the sale of fossil fuels or products running on them.” In other words, they want to outlaw cars, or slap them with taxes that would make it impossible for the working poor and middle class to afford them.
The authors also wanted even more taxes on “carbon-intensive luxury consumptions, starting with private jets, superyachts, sport utility vehicles (SUVs), and frequent air travel.” They suggested a “punitive rate” of 90 percent on anything they decided was a “luxury,” although it would be better for governments to ban them outright.
Soccer moms and business travelers would doubtless be surprised to find themselves lined up against the wall next to Elon Musk and the Walton family as traitors to the glorious climate revolution, their SUVs suddenly reclassified as a menace on par with Learjets.
The report also suggested extra taxes on “windfall profits,” additional “fees” for “climate finance,” penalties for corporations that fail to keep “climate promises,” and $5 trillion in climate reparations paid to the “Global South” by the “Global North.”
“Both globally and at the national level, the incomes of the top 10% should be no higher than the bottom 40%,” they pronounced, demanding whatever confiscation and redistribution was necessary to achieve that goal.
The Oxfam authors resolutely refused to consider the possibility that these gigantic tax increases would reduce economic activity, bringing in far less revenue than projected. Instead, they anticipated raking in about $10 trillion a year with their 90 percent luxury taxes and 60 percent income taxes.
The authors also anticipated resistance from the people they intended to loot for their redistribution schemes, so they wrapped up by commanding the free world to reject “neoliberal economics” – in other words, free-market capitalism and representative democracy – to “put the State at the center of delivering healthy and prosperous societies that are good for the people and the planet.”
“This means rejecting the assumption that the only way to transform our society away from fossil fuel dependence is by enabling and/or subsidizing private actors,” they explained.
The climate change movement is increasingly clear that its vision of a low-carbon world is not a vision of a free or prosperous humanity, and socialists are increasingly clear that they see the climate movement as a vehicle for extracting more money and power from unwilling populations.
