Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people

Oxfam International, UK, published this paper on November 7, 2022. It has been written by Alex Maitland, Max Lawson, Hilde Stroot, Alexandre Poidatz, Ashfaq Khalfan and Nafkote Dabi, researchers working with Oxfam. Citing the World Inequality Report 2022, the paper states that 50 to 70 per cent of the carbon emissions of the world’s richest people result from their investments in highly polluting sectors like fossil fuels and cement. The average annual carbon footprint of one of the 125 richest billionaires in the world is noted to be around 3.1 million tonnes. This, the paper states, is more than a million times higher than the emissions attributable to a person from the poorest 90 per cent of the global population. The paper finds that the intensity of the emissions of the world’s richest 125 billionaires could be brought down by almost four times. This could be achieved by shifting their investments to funds with more robust environmental and social standards. The 32-page paper is divided into five sections: Climate and inequality, and why investment matters (Section 1); Why our calculations underestimate the scale of billionaires’ investment emissions (Section 2); The role of corporates in climate breakdown (Section 3); Policy recommendations for governments (Section 4); and Recommendations for corporates, directors and shareholders to drive change (Section 5).