emissions from the investments of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire
Not
emissions from the private jets of 125 billionaires averaged 3.1m tonnes per billionaire
This isn’t billionaires directly producing emissions from their private jets or yachts.
This is Bill Gates having a diversified portfolio that includes owning a bunch of BP, accounting the emissions caused by people buying gas from BP and then driving around to BP, and the accounting whatever percentage of BP that the Gates Foundation owns to Bill Gates.
What exactly is your solution to the problem of Bill Gates owning some percentage of BP without making regular people emit any less? After all, getting people to drive less before zeroing out Bill Gates’s emissions is apparently “putting the cart before the horse”.
Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” said Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland.
The problem isn’t the yachts or private jets, or who owns them.
The problem identified in the article is that Exxon and BP sell a shitload of fossil fuels, and Bill Gates owns over a billion dollars of shares in fossil fuel companies like BP. The private jets are a red herring, regardless of who owns them.
The article basically amounts to “12 billionaires own a bunch of gas company stock”.
My point is that
The article is pulling a fast one to make it sound like the private jets and yachts are the problem if you don’t actually read the article carefully.
And
The solution to the problem of emissions from oil sold by oil companies is the same regardless of if the oil company owned by a billionaire, the Saudi king, a communist government or if they’re a worker owned co-op. It’s the same if it’s 1 big company, or 100 smaller oil companies. The problem is pumping and burning oil, not who profits from it.
Billionaires are a problem, but they’re not really the problem here. If you threw these 12 billionaires into a gulag tomorrow and sold their yachts and private jets as scrap, the emissions identified here would be barely impacted.
Because, again, the article is dressing up the problem of oil companies as being the problem with billionaires.
Notice:
Not
This isn’t billionaires directly producing emissions from their private jets or yachts.
This is Bill Gates having a diversified portfolio that includes owning a bunch of BP, accounting the emissions caused by people buying gas from BP and then driving around to BP, and the accounting whatever percentage of BP that the Gates Foundation owns to Bill Gates.
What exactly is your solution to the problem of Bill Gates owning some percentage of BP without making regular people emit any less? After all, getting people to drive less before zeroing out Bill Gates’s emissions is apparently “putting the cart before the horse”.
Who owns the private jets?
I was foolish to think that inference was a faculty available to readers.
The problem isn’t the yachts or private jets, or who owns them.
The problem identified in the article is that Exxon and BP sell a shitload of fossil fuels, and Bill Gates owns over a billion dollars of shares in fossil fuel companies like BP. The private jets are a red herring, regardless of who owns them.
Wrong. Who owns the fossil fuel companies, investments, private jets and yachts?
Billionaires should not exist.
Which is a bigger problem, emissions-wise:
Or
Is that what the article is about? Should we consider methane from cows? Solar cycles? Reel it back in homie.
The article basically amounts to “12 billionaires own a bunch of gas company stock”.
My point is that
And
Billionaires are a problem, but they’re not really the problem here. If you threw these 12 billionaires into a gulag tomorrow and sold their yachts and private jets as scrap, the emissions identified here would be barely impacted.
Because, again, the article is dressing up the problem of oil companies as being the problem with billionaires.
The problem is, and always will be, until tossed into the dust bin of history- Capitalism.