Wealthy people with environmental ideals are the biggest emitters

Private jets are the most carbon-intensive way to travel People who care the most about the environment also do the most environmental damage with their jet-setting lifestyle, at least among those with the highest income and education. But rather than being a critique of environmentalism, this finding shows that changing policy is more important than changing values when it comes to halting the climate and biodiversity crises, scientists say. “We do not want to suggest that individuals are solel

In fact, the term “carbon footprint” was popularised by BP to shift responsibility to consumers. It’s long been known that a person’s footprint tends to increase with their income. This study, however, brought personal beliefs into the equation. Researchers first asked 5000 people across Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US about their income, wealth, education and job prestige to establish their socioeconomic status. Then they asked them about their views on nature, climate and wastefulness. Finally, they asked about factors like meat and dairy consumption, house size, trash generation, vehicle use and hours spent flying to estimate a broad “ecological footprint”. For most respondents, the more importance they placed on preserving nature, the lower their ecological footprint. But among the top 30 per cent by socioeconomic status, the people who cared the most about the environment had an even larger footprint than their peers. The main reason was that high-income nature lovers fly frequently, one of the most emissions-intensive individual activities. They may be justifying this by dedicating themselves to activities like recycling that barely reduce their footprint, says Dewies. Environmentalism is “a universalistic value, and that means these are also the people who are open-minded, who want to interact with people from different cultures, who typically have friends in different countries and who fly more”, says Felix Creutzig at the University of Sussex, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research. Earlier research hypothesised that environmental impacts first increase but later curve downward as a country gets richer and has more money to invest in sustainable alternatives, a trend dubbed the “ environmental Kuznets curve ”.

Key points

• In fact, the term “carbon footprint” was popularised by BP to shift responsibility to consumers.
• It’s long been known that a person’s footprint tends to increase with their income.
• This study, however, brought personal beliefs into the equation.
• Researchers first asked 5000 people across Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US about their income, wealth, education and job prestige to establish their socioeconomic status.
• Then they asked them about their views on nature, climate and wastefulness.