More broadly, our analysis supports the idea that wealthy individuals should contribute a lot more to help those suffering the most from climate impacts. 7/
Our findings suggest that policies targeting the emissions and investments of the wealthiest could have a big impact on reducing climate change. They also strengthen the case for progressive climate policies that hold high emitters accountable. 6/
Lastly, our approach allows us to also quantify transboundary impacts of wealthy emitters. For example, the emissions of the wealthiest 10% of US Americans and Chinese each led to a. 2-3 fold increase in heat extremes across vulnerable regions. 5/
These wealthy groups contributed much more to dangerous heat and drought events than the average person—up to 26 times more for the top 1% when it comes to extreme heat globally. And up to 17 times (top 1%) more to Amazon droughts. 4/
The richest 10% of people worldwide contributed to about two-thirds of global warming since 1990, and the top 1% alone about one-fifth. If the entire world had emitted like the bottom 50%, there would have been minimal warming since 1990. Lot more in there (check out this figure) 👇 3/
So what did we do? We combine wealth-based GHG inequality assessments from @wid.world and @lucaschancel.bsky.social with an emulator modelling framework to systematically attribute changes in global temperature and grid-cell-level climate extremes to emissions from different wealth groups. 2/
💰🌍 Research by Sarah Schöngart et al. shows the wealthiest 10% caused TWO-THIRDS of global warming since 1990. The top 1% have an even bigger impact on extreme weather like #heatwaves and #droughts, hitting vulnerable regions hardest.
