Can Earth Support a Human Future? Maybe, If the Rich Consume Less.

The latest study by renowned Dutch climate scientist Klaus Hubacek and his team offers an eye-opening look at the 1 percent’s extravagant consumer behaviors that — in combination with rampant militarism and the continued dominance of the fossil fuel industry — are pushing the Earth toward disastrous climate tipping points from which there might be no return.

Published last week in the journal Nature, the study found that the world’s richest 1 percent are responsible for a staggering 50 times more greenhouse gas pollution than the 4 billion people on the bottom half of the global economic scale combined.

Disparities are only growing. The global wealth gap has exploded over the past decade, according to the aid group Oxfam International. Since 2020, the world’s richest 1 percent has captured nearly two-thirds of all newly created wealth.

The United States and other wealthy fossil fuel economies are disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis compared to poorer nations, creating a constant source of tension at international climate talks. However, massive disparities in resource and energy consumption also exist within individual countries, and Hubacek’s study breaks an extensive dataset down to 201 “consumption groups” across 168 nations.

In the U.S. and many other wealthy countries, the environmental footprint left behind by the richest 10 percent dwarfs the footprint of the bottom 10 percent on the economic ladder, the study finds. The top 10 percent of consumers living in wealthy nations such as Germany or Luxembourg have vastly different consumption habits than the richest 10 percent in the Republic of Congo, for example, and the study goes beyond previous research to account for these disparities.

Hubacek, a professor at the University of Groningen and a lead author of the most recent United Nations climate report, has devoted his career to examining how humans are performing within what are known as “planetary boundaries.” Scientists use these planetary boundaries as frameworks to examine how much human exploitation the planet can absorb before the ecosystems we depend on collapse.

“The basic calculation is, given a certain number of people on the planet and the planetary boundaries, how much can we consume to stay inside these limits?” Hubacek explained in a statement last week.

With 8 billion people living on Earth, we are burning through resources and accelerating climate disruption at a rapid pace. The study examines how different consumer groups contribute to key indicators such as climate change and carbon pollution emissions, fertilizer usage, land loss and system change, and freshwater consumption to gauge what needs to change before the planet is pushed to the brink.

The world’s top 10 percent of consumers were responsible for a whopping 43 percent of climate-warming carbon pollution, the study found. On a per capita basis, the environmental impacts of the top 10 percent were 4.2 to 77 times that of the bottom 10 percent, with large disparities in terms of climate-warming carbon emissions and the extinction of animal species.

Scientists determined in 2023 that humanity has already crossed six of nine observed “planetary boundaries,” overshooting the safe limits for human life in terms of carbon in the atmosphere, biosphere integrity and the availability of fresh drinking water. At this point, the rate of species extinction is estimated to be at least 10 times faster than the average rate over the past 10 million years, meaning that the planet’s genetic diversity has crossed over into the danger zone.

Even though many emissions result from institutions such as large militaries that would require government action to change (emissions that exist outside the sphere of individual consumer choices), the study emphasizes that the people with the most wealth and agency — higher-income people living in high-income countries — can make much more of a difference than everyone else. The study stresses that the choices made by those with the most privilege present both a threat to global ecological stability and an opportunity for change.

“Our results challenge the pessimistic view that reducing consumption requires a return to primitive lifestyles, showing instead that substantial environmental benefits can be achieved by moderating the consumption of the affluent,” the authors wrote.

If those with the most privilege were, en masse, to stop engaging in excessive travel on airplanes, excessive consumption of luxury goods and the consumption of red meat, the study suggests the results could be dramatic.

For example, if the top 10 percent adopted the consumption habits of the average European, or even the modest consumers within their own economic class, global pressure on the environment would decrease by 9 to 23 percent, and “overshoots” of the planetary boundaries would be mitigated by 18 to 81 percent.

For this reason, Hubacek’s team argues that new technology is not necessary to save the planet; rather, a massive, global sea change in the diet and lifestyles of top consumers would do the trick. The authors point to numerous studies showing that progressive taxes on luxury goods can start to curb overconsumption among the rich while funding environmental cleanup programs.

This is far from the first time scientists have warned that the rich people of the world are responsible for the most environmental damage. A global explosion of affluence over the past half-century has continuously increased pollution and gobbled up resources far more rapidly than advances in technology can keep up with.

Meanwhile, billionaires are building luxury doomsday bunkers and launching themselves into space as they fantasize about relocating to a different planet entirely if humanity happens to burn this one out. While Hubacek’s latest study shows that solutions to existential environmental crises are right in front of us, the authors are also sober about today’s political realities.

“Targeting affluent groups with mitigation measures may face resistance owing to their political power,” the authors wrote. “Bottom-up actions, which play a crucial role in cultural and value changesare vital for pushing top-down changes and establishing maximum consumption thresholds through democratic decision-making.”