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.

  • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.