PARIS
\nThe world\u2019s wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said Tuesday.
\nHow the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events.
\n\u201cWe link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts,\u201d lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, told AFP.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.\u201d
\nCompared to the global average, for example, the richest one percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves, and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the findings, published in Nature Climate Change.
\nEmissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States \u2014 which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution \u2014 each led to a two-to-threefold rise in heat extremes.
\nBurning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated Earth\u2019s average surface by 1.3 degrees Celsius, mostly during the last 30 years.
\nSchoengart and colleagues combined economic data and climate simulations to trace emissions from different global income groups and assess their impact on specific types of climate-enhance extreme weather.
\n\u201cClimate action that doesn\u2019t address the outsized responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risk missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm,\u201d said senior author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS The world\u2019s wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said Tuesday. How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-477241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n