{"id":1357362,"date":"2023-11-28T06:56:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T06:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=306015"},"modified":"2023-11-28T06:56:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T06:56:28","slug":"our-rich-fooling-themselves-and-fouling-our-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/28\/our-rich-fooling-themselves-and-fouling-our-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Rich: Fooling Themselves and Fouling Our Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"

Photograph Source: Harlan Huntington – Public Domain<\/p><\/div>\n

Look, up in the sky! It\u2019s a bird! It\u2019s a plane, it\u2019s . . . Wall Street\u2019s electric air-taxi future!<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a flying machine from the California-based Joby Aviation became the\u00a0first \u201celectric vertical take-off and landing aircraft \u2014 \u201ceVTOL\u201d \u2014 to go airborne from the Downtown Heliport that services Lower Manhattan\u2019s financial district.<\/p>\n

Joby is now expecting, by sometime in 2025, to be regularly ferrying high finance\u2019s finest from Wall Street to JFK Airport in a mere seven minutes. Mere mortals taking autos and subways routinely spend well over an hour making the same trip.<\/p>\n

Joby\u2019s new one-pilot, four-passenger eVTOL figures to be only the first of many corporate efforts to speed New York\u2019s deepest pockets on their electric way to destinations both lucrative and exotic. A host of corporations \u2014 from China\u2019s eHang to Germany\u2019s Volocopter \u2014 already have big plans underway for zipping the world\u2019s richest up and over congested city streets.<\/p>\n

But just imagine if all the investments and expertise going into turning our skies into air-taxi lanes for the richest among us were instead going into air-speed services that actually meet real public needs. Imagine air taxis, for instance, ferrying critically injured rural residents to distant emergency care.<\/p>\n

Those sorts of efforts will have to wait. The vast wealth of our wealthiest is instead bending innovation and expertise to servicing the already rich. And that bending, new research out of Oxfam details<\/a>, is keeping our planet\u2019s richest entertained at a vast environmental cost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

The world\u2019s wealthiest 1 percent, Oxfam\u2019s latest research reveals, are now generating more carbon emissions than all the world\u2019s poorest 66 percent combined. The carbon emissions from this 1 percent will \u2014 between 2020 and 2030 \u2014 \u201ccause 1.3 million heat-related deaths\u201d worldwide.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s bottom 99 percent, Oxfam adds, would have to consume away for 1,500 years to match<\/a> the carbon output that billionaires now produce in a single year.<\/p>\n

But, even so, the political<\/em> impact of the super-rich actually outpaces the impact of their personal energy consumption. Only our richest \u201chave the wealth, power, and influence to protect themselves.\u201d And that same \u201cwealth, power, and influence,\u201d the new Oxfam study lays out, is keeping governments worldwide doing no more than \u201cincentivizing incremental change\u201d in energy policy instead of phasing out fossil fuels and investing massively in renewable energy.<\/p>\n

We must not let ourselves treat climate and inequality as \u201cseparate issues,\u201d environmental activist Greta Thunberg adds in her foreword to Oxfam\u2019s latest appraisal of our world\u2019s environmental and economic crises.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither we safeguard living conditions for all future generations,\u201d she relates, \u201cor we let a few very rich people maintain their destructive lifestyles and preserve an economic system geared towards short-term economic growth and shareholder profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201ctwin crises of climate and inequality,\u201d Oxfam\u2019s Climate Equality: A planet for the 99% <\/em>report goes on to spell out, are \u201cdriving one another\u201d \u2014 and only \u201ca radical new approach\u201d stands any chance of \u201covercoming the catastrophe unfolding before us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201cradical new approach\u201d must take on \u201cthe disproportionate role that the richest individuals play in the climate crisis through their emissions, investments, and capture of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can we best realize this badly needed \u201cnew approach\u201d? We would need, argues Oxfam, to start aggressively taxing our super rich and the corporations that fuel their fortunes \u201cto help pay for the transition to renewable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just one example: Some 45 major oil and gas corporations averaged annual windfall profits of $237 billion in 2021 and 2022, dollars that overwhelmingly funneled straight into rich shareholder pockets. Governments worldwide, Oxfam notes, could have increased global investments in renewable energy by 31 percent had they taxed this windfall profit at 90 percent.<\/p>\n

The new Oxfam study surveys a wide range of other options the world\u2019s nations could pursue to subject the rich to serious taxation. Govrnments could, for instance, levy \u201csteep and progressive\u201d tax increases on the incomes of the ultra rich \u2014 \u00a0as well as on their property, land, and inheritances. They could raise taxes on corporate profits, fossil fuels, and financial transactions \u2014 or levy entirely new taxes on \u201chigh-emitting luxury travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world, in other words, could have plenty of money for social and climate spending \u201cif rich-country governments were willing to implement bold and progressive tax reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot allow the richest countries to claim that they cannot afford to raise the trillions needed,\u201d Oxfam concludes. \u201cMobilizing this money simply takes political will.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Our Rich: Fooling Themselves and Fouling Our Planet<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Look, up in the sky! It\u2019s a bird! It\u2019s a plane, it\u2019s . . . Wall Street\u2019s electric air-taxi future! Earlier this month, a flying machine from the California-based Joby Aviation became the\u00a0first \u201celectric vertical take-off and landing aircraft \u2014 \u201ceVTOL\u201d \u2014 to go airborne from the Downtown Heliport that services Lower Manhattan\u2019s financial district. More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Our Rich: Fooling Themselves and Fouling Our Planet<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1357362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1359580,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357362\/revisions\/1359580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}