Source: Climate: Inequality and the climate debate
….But there is another economic lens through which we can look at climate change: Inequality, an issue that been a concern for many voters in the past.
At least that’s what the French economist Thomas Piketty argues in his new book, “Nature, Culture and Inequality: A Comparative Historical Perspective,” which came out this week.
Piketty’s groundbreaking 2014 book on wealth and economic growth, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” captured the world’s attention and helped push the issue of inequality into the mainstream.
Now, in his new work, Piketty has turned his attention, in part, to climate change and the ways in which inequality could help both explain the issue and help point to solutions.
When we spoke last week, he highlighted figures that showed it isn’t just that the richest countries are the most responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change; it’s that the richest people in the world emit many times the amount the poorest do.
The top 10 percent of the richest people in the world account for almost half of global emissions, according to 2019 data Piketty drew from the last World Inequality Report. The top 1 percent account for just under 17 percent of global emissions, he found. (The report is worth a read, especially for a deeper dive into the immense carbon inequalities in North America.)
“There’s no way we can preserve the planetary habitability in the long run if we don’t address our inequality challenge at the same time,” Piketty told me.
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