I recently had to replace the hot water system in my house. It cost a small fortune. I鈥檓 fortunate enough to be able to afford it, but I couldn鈥檛 go to the next level, a heat pump. My carbon footprint will be lowered by my new boiler, but it won鈥檛 be where I want it to be: zero.
If I can鈥檛 afford it, god only knows how the majority of people ever will. But there are those living not far from me who could buy a heat pump for every house in London and hardly feel the pinch. They are the super-rich, and they are an environmental horror story, for two reasons.
The obvious one is excessive consumption. According to the , the average greenhouse gas emissions of someone in the richest 10 per cent of global society (yes, including me) are around 20 times the average of someone in the poorest 50 per cent. by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found the world鈥檚 richest 1 per cent collectively emit the same as the poorest two-thirds.
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A new book by Ingrid Robeyns puts this in stark personal terms. In , she calculates that to get to net zero, the average per capita carbon footprint needs to be 2 tonnes a year. The European average is 8 tonnes. The top 1 per cent emit over 100 tonnes, with billionaires emitting a mind-blowing 8000 tonnes, mostly through the use of private jets and superyachts.
There are very few billionaires, but their consumption is only part of the equation. Huge inequality is bad for everyone 鈥� and the planet.
That much was made plain by the 2009 book by social epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. In a recent , Pickett said: 鈥淲hat The Spirit Level showed was that economic inequality, specifically income inequality, was related to a whole range of different problems: health problems, issues to do with human capital development, such as educational attainment and social mobility, and everything to do with relationships. The crucial point is that inequality seems to affect almost all of society.鈥� In the years since 2009, the evidence for this has only grown stronger.
As for the environment, inequality isn鈥檛 just bad for the obvious reasons. A in Nature Climate Change makes a compelling case that inequality is a major obstacle to sustainability, because people at the lower end of the income spectrum don鈥檛 have the resources 鈥� money and time 鈥� to make the necessary lifestyle changes. To return to my recent dilemma, installing a heat pump involves major up-front costs, and is only available to homeowners.
Not only does inequality limit people鈥檚 opportunities to make sustainable choices, it also drives unsustainable consumption at lower income levels.
Humans are hardwired for 鈥渟ocial evaluative threat鈥� 鈥� anxiety about how we are seen by others. This threat induces a type of stress called status anxiety. Subconsciously, we are all evaluating where we stand in the economic pecking order and trying to climb to the next rung, or at least not slide down. One of the easiest ways to alleviate status anxiety is conspicuous consumption.
In any society, the poorest people have the highest levels of status anxiety and the richest the least. But here鈥檚 the rub: in more unequal societies, status anxiety is higher across the board. One study found that in the most equal societies, the poorest have a status anxiety score of , as judged by their degree of agreement with questions such as 鈥渙thers look down on me because of my job situation or income鈥�. The richest score about 1.8. In the most unequal societies, the scores are 2.7 and 2.1. In other words, the richest people in very unequal societies have roughly the same level of status anxiety as the poorest in more equal ones.
How do people respond to status anxiety? In part by consuming high-status goods. Multiple research projects have found that tend to spend more on swanky cars and designer clothes, which have a very large carbon footprint. 鈥淪tatus competition driving consumerism upward is a huge obstacle to moving towards sustainability,鈥� said Wilkinson in the webinar with Pickett.
Many Western societies are still tolerating, or even encouraging, eye-watering levels of inequality. People tend to balk at policies that explicitly talk about redistribution, according to Luke Hildyard, author of . But they also underestimate the obscene wealth held by a few people who emit more than just greenhouse gases. It is a tough argument to make, but it has to be made. As Wilkinson said: 鈥淲e cannot solve the environmental crisis without solving the inequality crisis.鈥�
Graham鈥檚 week
What I鈥檓 reading
Limitarianism: The case against extreme wealth by Ingrid Robeyns
What I鈥檓 watching
3 Body Problem on Netflix
What I鈥檓 working on
Paying off my new boiler
Graham Lawton is a staff writer at New 杏吧原创 and author of Mustn鈥檛 Grumble: The surprising science of everyday ailments. You can follow him @grahamlawton
