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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

I think a very problematic aspect of this is self-perception.

People that see (growing) wealth inequality as a problem rarely perceive themselves as part of it, but e.g. anyone complaining about the "top 1%" on this forum is pretty likely to be part of the "problem" themselves, globally speaking.

I think that for a lot of issues "people richer than us" are mostly a convenient scapegoat to shift the blame upstream, e.g. with CO2 emissions: If you're an average "western" citizen, then you are pretty likely to be in the upper percentiles of emission culpability, and pointing at celebrities and their private jets or somesuch is no better than thinly veiled whataboutism in my view.

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> you are pretty likely to be in the upper percentiles of emission culpability

Since you are talking about culpability specifically, what exactly can they do about it? Or, more to the point, what have they done so that it it is their fault?

Vote political parties into power that put a price on emissions and honestly work on reducing it.

The big problem is that this is not gonna be free. When fossils are used, it's obviously because they are the most economical option. As soon as you price in actual externalities (=> climate change), energy is going to get more expensive, and people don't like this. Almost everyone claims to be concerned about climate change, but a lot of people are neither willing to pay more for gas or power, nor do they want to risk making local industry less competitive.

The sad truth is that almost any cost for environmental sustainability/emission reduction is already too much for a lot of people.

What if those political parties don't exist...

If there are no parties mainly concerned with climate sustainability, then that is very likely because voters are not sufficiently interested in such platforms, and are more receptive to messages like "will fight immigrants", "will fight use of incorrect pronouns" or "will prevent trans-women from fighting in womens MMA".

Speaking for the US: climate sustainability (as main focus) was up for election 25 years ago, and about half the nation did not even bother voting, so it seems unsurprising to me that focus has shifted away from this issue (and fair to blame voters for that).

> globally speaking

What if instead of comparing people in, say America to people in South Sudan, you compare people in America to people in America.

The amount of CO2 emissions a human makes or even an average family makes pales in comparison to the emissions companies create. It was all advertising propaganda to reduce corporate accountability.

This is simply incorrect. CO2 emissions from a single passenger vehicle alone are ~5 tons/year (this is tailpipe missions only), while per capita emissions for EU/US citizens are between 5 and 15 tons/year.

So invididual transport alone (not even counting indirect emissions from vehicle construction, road infrastructure etc.) is already significant.

What fraction of emissions would you blame on corporations alone (which corporations)?

It is factually correct.

80% of global CO2 emissions come from 57 companies.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/since-2016-80-perc...

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