America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
Yeah, everyone needs a superyacht and a personal jet. I suppose that they always turn off the lights when they leave the room. For a bit of light relief you can alway follow elonmusksjet as he burns through the fuel and spews out the CO2.
This is factoring in the fossil fuel impact of investments, which isn’t unreasonable, but is also a very different matter than private jets and yachts. The tenth percentile of household incomes in the US is $191,406, which is of course a pretty hefty sum, but not enough to have a jet and yacht habit. It is, however, enough to travel a fair bit and have some non-trivial investments and retirement savings. Given that your average American has very little savings, let alone retirement investments, I’d expect that to be a pretty big factor in this.
Anyone who has a 401k or IRA and invests in even vaguely general funds is going to be at least partially invested in fossil fuel companies and contributing to this. Something like a carbon tax would go a long way to making people actually pay the true costs that these investments and things like travel and large homes actually incur.
