Some important context¶
Some important context to this headline:
First, understand that "world's richest 10%" refers largely to the population of the global north. The upper strata of places like China and India do contribute, but the cutoff for being in the top 10% is roughly $138,000 net worth. https://t.co/shHXqdNFYw In the US, the top 60% of the population has a net worth of at least that much. In China, only 6% of the population is in the global 90th percentile. In India, it's 3%. In the rest of the global south, that number begins to get vanishingly small. The second thing to note is that this isn't strictly about individual emissions, like Taylor Swift's jet belching out thousands of tons of CO2 per year. The methodology of the study (https://t.co/ADGXPreGVC) tracks production, trade, and final consumption. Crucially, they look at how wealth is invested into production. If an American company invests $100 million into building a factory in Nigeria, the emissions from that factory ought to be treated as stemming from $100 million of AMERICAN capital, not Nigerian. This is an important distinction, because the global south is used as the industrial engine of the global north. Third world labor creates first world value. Those who own the profit very clearly own the responsibility for the harm done in its pursuit. In many "traditional" surveys, this distinction is ignored. The emissions from that factory would be called Nigerian emissions. Hence many misleading statistics showing that the global north is "decoupling GDP from emissions" -- they aren't. They're just exporting the emissions. However, one important factor that this study does not seem to account for is the outsized role of the flow of embodied labor in the final consumption of the goods being produced. That is, who are the people for whom all this production is being done to serve? In some ways, the investment of capital can be a decent proxy for final consumption: that is, a European company might invest in a factory in Indonesia and sell the goods produced in the European market. Those emissions would be European. But what about an Indian company which builds a factory in India, and then sells the goods to an American wholesaler, who then distributes the goods to American retailers for consumption by the American market? How are those emissions apportioned? The most sensible assignment might divide up the value piecemeal. If 30% of the value ends up in Indian hands and 70% in American hands, we could say the emissions are a 30-70 split. But remember that this production would not occur without the existence of that final market. In other words, the final consumption would count as a piece of the driving force of those emissions. Taylor Swift's jet is not just responsible for emissions from burning fuel, but emissions from manufacturing the jet itself, emissions from producing the fuel, etc. On a more relatable scale, the emissions from your phone are not just coming from the electricity to power it, but from the manufacturing of the phone -- crafting, transporting and assembling each component, mining the raw materials, the emissions from the retailer, etc. It would be immensely difficult to get that granular, but even so, we can broadly say that, under the system of global imperialism, the entire chain of production is constantly churning out environmental destruction to transform third world labor into first world consumption. As long as this system remains in place, you cannot "ethical consumption" your way around the consequences.