How big is a person’s carbon footprint depends not only on the income, but also on the countrywhere she lives. The top 10 percent in North America emitted almost 69 tons of CO₂ equivalents in 2019. In sub-Saharan Africa, the top 10 percent released 7.5 tons. The global average across all income brackets is six tons. In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, each person should cause only 1.9 tons of CO₂ equivalents per year. That’s roughly the equivalent of a round-trip flight from London to New York. While in 1990 the differences between per capita emissions were mainly related to the home country, most of them are now explained by income differences within countries. However, this does not mean that the countries are becoming more and more similar, but that inequality within a country has increased.
Study author Lucas Chancel of the World Inequality Lab arrived at these results by dividing countries’ emissions among the population based on income, wealth and consumption patterns. The emissions for which a person is responsible result from their consumption behavior, their investments and the expenditure of the country in which they live. The production processes in which owners invest accounted for more than 70 percent of the emissions of the world’s richest 1 percent in 2019. The author of the study traces emissions that occur when a factory is built, for example, to those who are responsible for this as owners. Nevertheless, the calculated CO₂ inequality is lower than the income inequality: While the top 10 percent create 48 percent of all CO₂, they earn 52 percent of all income in the world and own three quarters of the wealth.