The cover photo is a jet plane but remember, US$140,000/year is the threshold they’re quoting in the article so the reality is more like a decent car or two and a house in a nicer area will drop you into that range.
1% of the world’s population is 80,000,000 people.
There is too much variance in a population that large to make any reasonable statements or suggest adjustments.
We already know that people living on pennies per day aren’t the problem.
But shouldn’t it be easier to adjust the lifestyle of 80 million people rather than 8 billion?
And there are a few easy ones almost everyone in the 1% can chip in: reduce meat consumption, don’t fly, buy local and don’t buy single use items
The problem here is that this research works from a Capitalist understanding of responsibility. That is to say that Besos is responsible for the emissions of Amazon, musk for space x, etc. Which means absolutely nothing. It’s a bullshit number.
This is why I don’t believe people when they say “we don’t have an overpopulation problem, we have a distribution problem”
Because if everyone in the world had my lifestyle, we would be emitting an insane amount of carbon. And I don’t want my standard of living to go down, and in fact I want everyone to live as nicely as I do. So clearly we need fewer people.
The overpopulation isn’t happening in the 1%.
It makes jack shit of a difference to the environment if there is one billion or two billion starving people. They’re not the ones burning carbon or eating steak.