The richest Americans account for 40 percent of U.S. climate emissions | Hacker News Reader

The richest Americans account for 40 percent of U.S. climate emissions

washingtonpost.com

60 pointsmyshpa36 comments

I came to the article thinking I might have found something interesting to learn, and then I came across this:

Starr and his colleagues analyzed income data across U.S. households from 1990 to 2019 and linked it to emissions generated directly and indirectly from that income. They included income tied to emissions related to the operation of a business, such as from a coal-fired power plant. But they also included income, such as from investments, that supported services or products from those industries.

“As you move up the income ladder, an increasing share of emissions is associated with investments,” said Starr

So this reads almost like an implicit tautology, if I can phrase it like that. Basically, investments are tied to climate emissions -> wealthier people have more of these (because wealth is defined this way, hence tautology) -> wealthy are tied to carbon emissions.

Not useful. I was hoping to read about air travel or large homes or such.

It's worse than that. It neglects that investments only are associated with emissions because they are one side of a trade that results in emission producing activities. While willing investment could be argued to be a necessary precursor of greater emissions, willing labor, amongst other factors, is also a necessary ingredient without which the emissions don't happen. Allocating some of that responsibility to those on the other side of that trade is appropriate for a more complete accounting.

However, if you read Dr. Starr's self-description I suspect there's a specific narrative he's looking for:

"My research analyzes how economic inequality – particularly at the very top of the income distribution – shapes the distribution of environmental benefits and harms through the global economy." (https://www.jaredstarr.com/about)

Yeah, there is willing investment, willing labour, and willing consumption, and this article seems to put all criticism on the first, which is heavily skewed to the 1%, while not looking at second and third, which is skewed towards the bottom 99%.

I'm not saying you can't criticize the 1% for being massively wasteful consumers, it's entirely legitimate to criticize them. But as most consumption is by the 99%, the companies owned by the 1% mainly serve the consumption of the masses, not of the 1%.

There should be a term for social science clickbait, which is a lot of what these social science 'studies' seem to turn into.

Given the replication crisis, it's safe to assume pretty much everything from the social sciences at this point in time is outright false, if not deliberate propaganda -- because if you're funded by the Muppets Are Better At Everything Foundation, you sure aren't going to publish a paper titled "Actually, Muppets Are Just Puppets With Extra Proctology".

It's called "lysenkoism".

> In time, the term has come to be identified as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable.

Rich landowning cattle ranchers generate more greenhouse gas emissions than vegan college graduates that recycle.

It all comes down to attribution of emissions to producers vs consumers, and has been debated adnauseum.

Is the rancher emitting or the hamburger consumer. Is the plane passenger emitting, or a shareholder. Ect

> rich

> cattle ranchers

The fact that you think these two things go together really highlights how blinded by ideology you are.

i should have added /s

apologies if you are joking too

Well, if investing in coal plants is more profitable than investing in other investments, then we would expect people who invest in coal over solar to make more money and be richer.

And if it's not, we'd expect people to be investing in solar capacity instead, the manufacture of which has significant associated emissions.

I disagree. The attribution of money/credits/wealth points to a person or entity follows the exact same logic as the attribution of these hazardous emissions. You can’t have one and not the other.

I produce emissions from electricity, car, airplanes, etc. My stocks do not produce emissions. My emissions wouldn't go down if I sold all my stocks.

There are two ways to account for emissions and this study uses the wrong one. The first, the one that is produces the quote about how a few companies produce all the emissions, attributes emissions to the producer. The second attributes them to the consumer because they consume the energy.

The CO2 from gallon of gas isn't made by Exxon (excluding all the production) but from burning it in my car. The CO2 for electricity is produced at the plant but it is being used in my AC.

Exactly. And if consumers stopped purchasing gasoline, Exxon would be gone. Exxon is just serving consumer demand. The problem isn't Exxon, it's the consumers who want to burn enormous quantities of fuel in their gigantic SUVs.

While this is true to some extent, companies also play a major role at shaping the desires of the public, through advertising and lobbying etc. Look for example at the enormous impact of the car lobby on American cities, leading to much more cars on the roads and more emissions.

Cars are a necessity in America not because of car advertisements, but because of the low density of American towns and cities. Things are built that way because Americans want them like that, and it's nothing new: Americans started moving to the suburbs in the 1950s, partially because of the availability of inexpensive automobiles and fuel (mostly thanks to the post-war economic boom), and also because they didn't want to live near the black people in the inner cities. Outright racism drove a huge amount of why America looks the way it does now, as far as infrastructure and urban planning go. And it hasn't changed: just look at what Americans on online forums say when you try to suggest they live in dense, walkable cities and use subways. It'll either be comments about how they like having such a huge house and yard, or comments about the people living in inner cities.

What do you mean by 'same logic'?

So if we all eat the top 10% of rich Americans would we fart out 40% of earth's methane?

The answer is "No" because this article is talking mainly about the investing patterns of the top 10% of Americans, and those investments (so they say) fund more emissions.

Something smells off about that (and it's not the rich person I just ate). I guess I don't believe that it's purely the investments of the top 10% that are driving these companies that emit so much.

The profits generated and accumulated in the wealthy class should in the long run not exist - theoretically.

But of course they do, and the answer to that is that somebody else is paying the price for their externalities.

I’m not jealous and wish for everybody to be able to achieve wealth, but please with due calculation of everybody involved. Because the goal of this economic game is not that you win and I lose, but that we both win sufficiently and then I don’t care if you have a nicer boat.

But we didn’t play this game, instead your wealth directly correlates with how much you pollute the commons, we both lose. The credit you own has no legitimation anymore. Why should we continue to act as if does?

Ofc the situation is extremely complicated and we can’t just disown or let the polluters “pay back” immediately, but things evidently have to change for this damage to both of us to stop.

>But we didn’t play this game, instead your wealth directly correlates with how much you pollute the commons, we both lose. The credit you own has no legitimation anymore. Why should we continue to act as if does?

Doesn't that include index funds in your 401k? Bank funds that you might own that invest in polluting companies? And don't wealthier people have more shares of stocks in general?

I am asking someone to disprove my assertion that the article leans on a self-referential argument about wealth and carbon emissions.

Or are we saying wealthy people (top 10 percent, we're told) invest specifically in these companies and not others?

How would a clean wealthy person store or invest their wealth? Real estate, gold?

I can understand that you think in specifics but think for a second about the general value principles behind e.g. digging oil out of the ground.

The value is the oil, the cost is the work for extraction and the pollution.

Somebody having done the work to get out the oil is attributed credits because they did the work, had the cost in this referential way that you complained about below. How many credits they get is determined by demand and supply, where theoretically everybody looks at all the costs and utility and comes up with their idea of a price and then the market clears.

Now, then problem evidently is: We didn’t consider the costs your extraction put on all of us, the pollution. It was just “nah it’s fine”, but all things considered it’s not. Maybe the calculation is so bad that you now owe us for putting this cost on us - which would incentivize nobody to do that again. But we didn’t do it, and we gave you so many more credits than you deserved on all rational arguments that the whole picture is skewed.

> The profits ... in the long run not exist - theoretically. ... somebody else is paying the price for their externalities.

Externalities like rampant price inflation due in part due to year 2020 government bailouts of cruise lines and rich business owner huge tax rebates. The elite have a moat protecting their government feeding trough. The rest suffer externality of rising prices due to that money printing.

I would wager that most airline pilots find themselves in the top 10% in terms of wealth and/or income. Are all the emissions of the planes they fly figured into the calculation for this study?

I was having trouble following what is being calculated.

Seems like they’d have to be counted multiple times between the oil company investors, the airline investors, and the passengers, etc. Disclaimer though I haven’t read the article, but I am curious how they do the accounting.

Edit: or are they considering the entity that owns the fuel that’s being burned? But the whole issue is that the carbon is an externality of other economic processes. I could offer to accept ownership of all carbon emitted by any company for a nominal fee and become the world’s only polluter according to that methodology.

The pilot's fly the plane, but they aren't the reason the plane flies.

This is not merely dumb but actively harmful -- people will read the headline and think, "I'm not in the elite, and therefore have no climate responsibility."

(It's dumb because the measure of interest is consumption, not investment. It's not exactly the gas companies' fault that consumers use gas; if they quit, someone else would start.)

If you define emissions as basically equivalent to money you are bound to see a correlation.

Original article: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

I assume this still ignores the environmental impact of the US military, the world's biggest polluter by far.

It seems like they started with the conclusion they wanted (i.e. shareholders should bear financially responsible for the emissions of their investments) and designed a study that would confirm it. A more interesting and meaningful comparison would be of households and lifestyle/consumption habits.

There's quite a lot of climate-change journalism that seems to be less about working to solve the problems and more about agitating against capitalism

they're often the same problem, though. So it's a fair evaluation.

What do you think that is?

“As you move up the income ladder, an increasing share of emissions is associated with investments,” said Starr.

It's not rich people flying first class or whatever, but their investments in the worst CO2 emitters.

Should read “The richest 10 percent”

Wow! Almost as much as the Department of Defense.

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