🔥 America’s richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution, new report finds 🔥 -------------------------------- ❌❌❌ 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. ✔ A new study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Climate found the wealthiest 10% of Americans are responsible for almost half of planet-heating pollution in the US, and called on governments to shift away from “regressive” taxes on the carbon-intensity of what people buy and focus on taxing climate-polluting investments instead. ✔ “Global warming can be this huge, overwhelming, nebulous thing happening in the world and you feel like you’ve got no agency over it. You kind of know that you’re contributing to it in some way, but it’s really not clear or quantifiable,” said Jared Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a report author. ✔ This study helps build a clearer picture of individual responsibility by going beyond what people consume, he told CNN. ✔ To do this, the researchers analyzed huge datasets spanning 30 years to connect financial transactions to carbon pollution. ✔ They looked at the planet-heating pollution produced by companies’ direct operations, as well as those relating to companies’ climate impacts further down the supply chain – for example, the bulk of an oil company’s emissions comes when its customers burn the oil it extracts. ✔ That gave a carbon footprint for each dollar of economic activity in the US, which the researchers linked to households using population survey data that showed the industries people work for and their income from wages and investments. ✔ They found the wealthiest 10% in the US, households making more than about $178,000, were responsible for 40% of the nation’s human-caused, planet-heating pollution. The income of the top 1% alone – households making more than $550,000 – was linked to 15% to 17% of this pollution. Cre: CNN