A new Oxfam analysis estimates that the world’s richest 0.1 percent (8 million people) produce more carbon pollution than the world’s poorest 44% (3.5 billion people) combined.
A person in the richest 0.1 percent has contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heatwaves than someone in the poorest 50%.
Oxfam collaborated with researcher Sarah Schöngart of ETH Zurich to estimate how much different income groups contribute to global warming and extreme heat.
Climate Summit
The report, published ahead of the United Nations’ Climate Summit (COP31) in Türkiye, shows how the world’s super-rich drive climate breakdown through outsized emissions while shielding themselves from the consequences and, increasingly, profiting from the destruction.
Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar: “The climate crisis is often described as a shared human challenge. It is not. Those who have done the least to cause it are losing their homes, their harvests and, increasingly, their lives.”
“Meanwhile, the super-rich can buy their way out of danger – by retreating to high-tech underground survival bunkers, hiring private firefighting crews, and securing private insurance – and are actively profiting from the consequences of their pollution. This is not a tragedy of shared fate; it is a crime of extreme inequality.”
Private aviation
Used exclusively by the super-rich, private aviation remains one of the clearest examples of extreme carbon inequality. New analysis by Oxfam of private jet tracking data finds that, combined, private jets emit more carbon pollution in two seconds than someone in the poorest half of humanity emits in a year.
Oxfam’s report also shows how climate disasters have become an increasingly lucrative business. The global disaster recovery market is projected to grow from $70 billion to $92 billion annually by 2029.
Oxfam’s new Destroy & Rebuild Index identifies 217 corporations profiting from industries that fuel climate breakdown as well as disaster preparedness, recovery, and reconstruction.
Climate disasters
The report also warns that climate disasters are increasingly exploited to push policies that deepen inequality, including the privatization of climate action and public services, land grabs, deregulation, and tax breaks benefiting the super-rich. The result is a vicious cycle of injustice: deaths from flooding are seven times higher in more unequal countries.
Rich people can insulate themselves by paying more for food or moving to safer places, while most people cannot. Moreover, Oxfam’s new research shows that the super-rich are also profiting from climate pain, making huge profits from sky-high food prices and disasters.
Meanwhile, ordinary people, hit by successive climate shocks, struggle to recover. They are more exposed, more vulnerable, and have less savings to rebuild their lives.
‘Planet on fire’
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers. They are profiting from pollution and disaster. And they profit again from the clean-up,” Behar continues.
Oxfam is calling on governments meeting at the UN Climate Summit to break this vicious circle and make rich polluters pay. “We can minimize the human harm of climate breakdown by significantly and rapidly reducing the emissions of the richest people, radically reducing inequality within and between countries, and ending profiteering from climate disasters.”
