Global warming linked to world’s richest 10%

The wealthiest 10% of the world’s people are responsible for two-thirds of the global warming since 1990, according to researchers.The way in which the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of heatwaves and droughts, wrote the researchers of a study published last week in the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change.This is the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events.“We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts,” lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at the public university of ETH Zurich, told the AFP news agency. “It’s a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.”Compared with the global average, for example, the richest 1% contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the study.Emissions from the wealthiest 10% in China and the United States – which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution – each led to a two- to threefold rise in heat extremes.“If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990,” co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said. “Addressing this imbalance is crucial for fair and effective climate action.”Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated Earth’s average surface by 1.3 degrees Celsius, mostly during the past 30 years.'Driving climate extremes’Schoengart and her colleagues combined economic data and climate simulations to trace emissions from different global income groups and assess their impact on specific types of climate-enhanced extreme weather.“Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions. Instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth,” Schoengart said. “We found that wealthy emitters play a major role in driving climate extremes, which provides strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions.”

Global warming linked to world’s richest 10%

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Namibian Sun 2025-10-15

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Global warming linked to world’s richest 10%

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Namibian Sun 2025-10-15

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