Source: Is economic equality good for the climate ?
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…“Per capita wealth increases per capita emissions,” says study author Indra de Soysa, a political scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, “thus, any leveling up is bound to increase, not decrease, total emissions.”…
..“One hopeful result from my study is that increased inequality did not reduce the adoption of green energy technology,” de Soysa says. In fact, more unequal countries also have a slight edge in rolling out green energy technologies.
“One way out of the conundrum is more equitable use of resources—i.e., transferring wealth from rich to poor,” de Soysa says. For example, other researchers have calculated that global energy budgets consistent with meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement are sufficient to meeting everyone’s basic needs, but would require people in rich countries to consume less energy to leave more available for raising living standards in poorer countries.
This is similar to the idea of “degrowth,” meaning reducing consumption of the rich so that the poor could increase their consumption. “Planning such an enterprise is not the issue, but the will for such an enterprise is another thing,” says de Soysa.
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