Monbiot, It's Our Only Chance - Make Extreme Wealth Extinct.


Guardian eco-scribe, George Monbiot, writes that the ultra rich will be our ruin unless we get them first.


Most of our dysfunctions are caused by pandering to the rich. The way governments have allowed democracy to be eroded by lobbyists (including politicians with lucrative private interests); the deregulation that lets corporations, oligarchs and landlords squeeze their workers and tenants, then dump their costs on society; the permissive environment for profiteering during the pandemic; the degradation of health, education and other public services by the constant drive towards privatisation: all these are symptoms of the same condition.

The richest 1% of the world’s people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15% of the world’s carbon emissions: twice the combined impact of the poorest 50%. On average, they emit over 70 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person every year, 30 times more than we can each afford to release if we’re not to exceed 1.5C of global heating. While the emissions of the world’s middle classes are expected to fall sharply over the next decade, thanks to the general decarbonisation of our economies, the amount produced by the richest will scarcely decline at all: in other words, they’ll be responsible for an even greater share of total CO2. Becoming good global citizens would mean cutting their carbon consumption by an average of 97%.

...Big money now buys everything: even access to the meetings that should address these dysfunctions. On some accounts, Cop26 is the most exclusive of all climate summits. Delegates from poor nations have been thwarted by a cruel combination of byzantine visa requirements, broken promises to make Covid vaccines available, and the mad costs of accommodation, thanks to government failures to cap local prices, or make rooms available. Even when delegates from poorer nations can scale these walls, they often find themselves excluded from the negotiating areas, and therefore unable to influence the talks.

By contrast, more than 500 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access, more than the combined delegations of eight nations that have already been ravaged by climate breakdown: Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Mozambique, Myanmar, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. The perpetrators are heard, the victims excluded.

...Preventing systemic environmental collapse means driving extreme wealth to extinction. It is not humanity as a whole that the planet cannot afford. It’s the ultra-rich.

Comments

  1. Northern PoVNovember 10, 2021 at 5:40 AM

    "It is not humanity as a whole that the planet cannot afford. It’s the ultra-rich."

    Not your usual take on the population bomb and its ultimate consequences?

    Perhaps its more like a layer cake, with too much of the sugar and fat in the icing but plenty of layers of cake under that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Disaffected LibNovember 10, 2021 at 8:35 AM

    Monbiot has always been a bit wet on the overpopulation/excess consumption issues, NPoV. It's how he lets his ideology cloud his opinions. That said, the need for truly confiscatory wealth taxes is clear. This excessive concentration of wealth and the associated economic and political clout that carries menaces humanity.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LorneNovember 10, 2021 at 10:30 AM

    Given the obvious power of the wealthy, any changes made to their lifestyle, either voluntarily or by government action, will only be window dressing. We have seen the man behind the curtain, and he bears no resemblance to most of us, Mound.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 10, 2021 at 10:49 AM

      The problem with these Masters of the Universe is their failure to recognize that everything has a breaking point. Sooner or later they have to turn despotic to defend their privilege.

      Whether you're a Romanov or a Bourbon of some guy named Batista, it can end abruptly.

      Delete

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