America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
America’s wealthiest people are also some of the world’s biggest polluters – not only because of their massive homes and private jets, but because of the fossil fuels generated by the companies they invest their money in.
Every time I see such evaluations I get this picture of an economically illiterate person just making assumptions from some statistics they are unable to comprehend. A bit like with electrical engineering.
And in any case the useful metric would be pollution per dollar (or per joule) spent by a person, not totals. I don’t think I have to explain why, it’s obvious.
Why would capital have anything to do with it?
A private jet that pollutes 1.2 metric ton for a flight where a regular diesel car would pollute 0.3 metric ton. Isn’t going to be better just because the private jet costs 4 million while the car is only 30 thousands.
Pollution is pollution, doesn’t matter how much it costs. The planet doesn’t care. It will die anyway and take us with it.
So please, tell us why it is “obvious” to you.
It is going to be better because of there being much fewer private jets than regular diesel cars.
Damn fscking right it doesn’t. However, “cost” is a human concept, and humans do care. So if you want to reduce pollution, you’ll choose in favor of less pollution for the same amount of activity, and that is measured in dollars.
I just have.
No because assets and their place in capitalist enterprise represent control. I.e. an owner has fundamental rights to use workers according to the owners needs, and the owner also has the option to advertise and otherwise facitate propagand and take part in political process, including lobbying and corruption to affect circumstances outside of their direct control for example customer demand and government regulation, all of this control is proportional to the absolute wealth of that person family or group.
Obviously this is not to say the owners are in full control of all of their workers and assets individually, it’s just that they decide the system that all workers must use and this has an obvious effect on the things these workers do.
So the useful metric is certainly not pollution per $/person but one that is proportional in some way to the total wealth.
Sure this control can be mutually beneficial for the owner and the society at large, but it’s pretty clear now that with fossil enterprise especially, this is not the case, control gained from extracting an unfortunate life necessity from the ground, a resource that is set to destroy life on the planet as we know it, should not be able to be used for anything but to replace itself as quickly as possible, the tactic for the last 50 years from these owners was the opposite.
You are mixing up the correct metric for a person and the correct weight for a person .