[MCN] Climate change: Who's most responsible?

[Lance Olsen]

These findings confirm what earlier studies had also found, worldwide. LO
Haaretz Sep 20, 2018
When It Comes to Climate Change, the Rich Are the Culprit – but They Won't Pay the Price

An oligarch does as much damage to the climate in a day as an average person does in five years, according to a leading anthropologist and environmental researcher. Nevertheless, he remains hopeful

By Ayelett Shani <https://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/WRITER-1.4969323> 
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-it-comes-to-climate-change-the-rich-are-the-culprit-but-they-won-t-pay-the-price-1.6491713 <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-it-comes-to-climate-change-the-rich-are-the-culprit-but-they-won-t-pay-the-price-1.6491713>

Excerpt
A few years ago, we checked the disparity between the lowest and highest percentiles in Israel in three realms: automobile travel, electricity usage and food consumption. In regard to vehicles and electricity, the rich contribute 27 times as much as the poor to the greenhouse effect. In food it’s only twice as much, simply because there’s a limit to how much food one can consume.
But that’s obvious, isn’t it? Carbon inequality is simply another derivative of socioeconomic inequality, disparity and polarization. That’s the system.
The system also encourages those who can afford it to consume ever more without placing obstacles in their way. For example, Israel does not levy a carbon tax, which in the view of some is the only thing that might save us.



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“We don’t need to guard against alarmism, against depression, against anger, against despair when it comes to climate change.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/07/we_are_not_alarmed_enough_about_climate_change.html

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“Full of recent references and statistics, Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which climate change is only one dimension.

“One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak Smil’s calculations, but the bottom line will not change, only the time it may take 
humanity to reach a crisis point.”

Stephen Running. “Approaching the Limits” Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. ISBN 9780262018562.

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