#excessive wealth

And — who knows? — maybe if Democrats take that risk, it will free them, and all of us, from the dreary cycle of the past two decades in which frustrated voters turn from one party to the other and then back again, never finding the change they are seeking. And then, for the first time in decades, maybe working people will again vote reliably Democratic, because Democrats will have restored their working-class identity. »

— Dana Milbank at the Washington Post. (archived)

Democrats need to declare war on greed.

Some people have a pathological obsession with the accumulation of wealth which is hurting almost everybody else. These robber barons, mostly in tech, make their late 19th century counterparts seem like Buddhist monks. It's no longer enough to be a mere billionaire, the mega-greedy now aspire to become multi-billionaires or even trillionaires.

The richest 1% flaunt their excessive wealth by polluting on the rest of us. These mega wealthy individuals have been dubbed "the polluter elite".

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says. The most comprehensive study of global climate inequality ever undertaken shows that this elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than US$140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16% of all CO2 emissions in 2019 – enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat, according to the report. For the past six months, the Guardian has worked with Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts on an exclusive basis to produce a special investigation, The Great Carbon Divide. [ ... ] The Oxfam report shows that while the wealthiest 1% tend to live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, their emissions – 5.9bn tonnes of CO2 in 2019 – are responsible for immense suffering. Using a “mortality cost” formula – used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, among others – of 226 excess deaths worldwide for every million tonnes of carbon, the report calculates that the emissions from the 1% alone would be enough to cause the heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people over the coming decades. Over the period from 1990 to 2019, the accumulated emissions of the 1% were equivalent to wiping out last year’s harvests of EU corn, US wheat, Bangladeshi rice and Chinese soya beans. The suffering falls disproportionately upon people living in poverty, marginalised ethnic communities, migrants and women and girls, who live and work outside or in homes vulnerable to extreme weather, according to the research. [ ... ] “The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction and it is those who can least afford it who are paying the highest price,” said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser. The twin crises of climate and inequality were “fuelling one another”, she said.

The Top 1% may be bad, but the Top 0.1% are proportionately far worse.

The report says this is bad news for the climate on multiple levels. The extravagant carbon footprint of the 0.1% – from superyachts, private jets and mansions to space flights and doomsday bunkers – is 77 times higher than the upper level needed for global warming to peak at 1.5C. The corporate shares of many super-rich are highly polluting. This elite also wield enormous and growing political power by owning media organisations and social networks, hiring advertising and PR agencies and lobbyists, and mixing socially with senior politicians, who are also often members of the richest 1%, according to the report.

By owning large media entities, they exert great influence on public policy by manipulating the news narrative. We're looking at you Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk.