Climate Action Should Start With The 1%

Life-threatening floods, droughts, scorching temperatures and forest fires are the most recent results of climate change. Who is responsible? And where should Climate Action start?

Recently, the world has witnessed extreme-weather events linked to the climate crisis, all within weeks of each other; ‘heat domes’ in parts of the U.S. and Canada, sweltering heat waves across South Asia, relentless downpours, causing life-threatening floods in China, India, Turkey, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. The U.K. was also battered with almost a month's worth of rain in a day on Sunday, leaving many roads, stations, shopping centers and restaurants flooded. These are all red flags and ‘a sober reminder’ of the urgency of our situation and the need for world leaders to stick to their pledge and invest in sustainable energy.

With Europe and North America experiencing the mentioned weather disasters, it has driven home two important realities of science and history - that the world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change nor live with it. That being said, developing countries have suffered from the impacts of climate change for too long and simply do not have the means to finance themselves to overcome the consequences and damages caused by it. 

Bangladesh, a developing country, is exceptionally vulnerable to climate change. 

Germans sift through debris after devastating floods (Thomas Lohnes | | Guardian.)

The country has made several headlines for its vulnerability due to its low elevation, high population density and inadequate infrastructure, all putting the nation in harm's way. Along with an economy that is heavily reliant on farming - crops are regularly destroyed as a result of frequent Cyclones - causing a serious fracture in their economy and country’s GDP. The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that by 2050, one in seven people in Bangladesh will be displaced by Climate Change. And up to 18 million people may have to move because of sea-level rise alone. Climate displacement across borders has also increased over recent years. In May 2017, Bangladesh was the largest single origin of migrants arriving in Europe.

Reviewing this account alone demonstrates that developed countries, the greatest drivers of climate breakdown, are the quickest to recover from their misfortunes, while countries like Bangladesh are swamped by their lack of resources.

Climate Action

With less than 100 days left until this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference - AKA ‘COP26’ - experts claim that this International Summit holds a particular urgency. If signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement do not meet their set COP26 goals and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, they could lose our best chance at getting climate change under control. 

COP26 has set out four ‘ambitious’ goals for world leaders to meet over the next eight years:

1.Secure global net-zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach 

2. Adapt to protect communities and natural habitats

3. Mobilise finance

4. Work together to deliver

Time is a commodity more than 100 developing nations' governments cannot afford. They demand action from the developed world before COP26 climate talks commence and rightly so. The concentration of wealth within the world’s largest carbon emitters - China, U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Germany and the U.K. demonstrates that the “fight against [economic] inequality and the fight for climate justice is the same fight.” It is these poorer countries who bear the greatest burden of climate change as a result of 2/3 carbon emissions and do not have the means to protect themselves. 

A report published in January by OXFAM, states: ‘1 percent of the global population have used two times as much carbon as the poorest 50 percent over the last 25 years. So with the 1 percent using up more carbon than the poorest 50 percent of the world — why are the poor still bearing the burden? The answer is simple — inequality and lack of accountability.

The Coronavirus -  ‘The Inequality Virus’ created a moment of uncertainty that did not manage to put an end to the lavish lifestyles of celebrities, political leaders, and mass corporations and their CEOs like Jeffrey Bezos. In fact, according to OXFAM: ‘Billionaires’ wealth increased by $3.9 trillion between March 18 and Dec. 31, while the number of people living on less than $5.50 a day may have increased to as many as 500 million in 2020’.

While commercial travel is still limited for the majority, ‘private aviation in a world with COVID-19’  is the hip new trend for our world's 1%. If that wasn’t luxurious enough, British Entrepreneur Richard Branson successfully flew to the edge of space and back in his Virgin Galactic Passenger Rocket plane, days before Amazon Founder and billionaire, Jeffery Bezos, did the same. 

So where should climate action start? Should it start with our ‘space cowboys’ Bezos and Branson? 

The means and resources in achieving a successful plan for climate action should consider the unbalanced scale of resources that presents a challenge for ordinary civilians across the world. On one hand, you have Jeffrey Bezos, whose net worth is $211.4 Billion USD, and Elon Musk, whose net worth is $163.0 Billion USD. On the other hand, you have around 500 million people living on less than $5.50 a day. It is nothing less than mind-blowing that the resources of these two billionaires equal close to the GDP of Bangladesh, a country of 166,303,498 people.

Time is running out. Over the next eight years — the commoditization of the earth must be rethought. Environmental accountability must be established and inequalities must be resolved. A change in attitude is necessary, and not just from ordinary individuals. It must come from the 1 percent. It must come from those reaping the rewards of carbon-producing processes, not those paying the price —climate action should start with the 1 percent.