Few status symbols for the Super Rich stand out more than superyachts. Members of royal families, oligarchs, and billionaires are known to crave the elegance and indulgence, the refined taste and unparalleled luxury that these enormous floating homes offer. Superyachts are often longer than 100 feet in length and are customized to meet the lavish vision of their owners.
Money is no object for those who desire opulence and paradise on the seas. What these superyacht owners don’t pay much attention to as a general rule are the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their floating paradises. In fact, many of these Super Rich obtained their wealth from industries that emit enormous amounts of GHGs .
Don’t these 1% have a responsibility to cut emissions, not only in their business enterprises but in their personal carbon footprints? The most well-off do have the highest carbon lifestyles, after all. Analysts from the World Inequality Lab, which is led by the Paris School of Economics and University of California at Berkeley, have generated an alternative assessment replacing gross domestic product with varying measures of consumer income. It seems that personal wealth does more than national wealth to explain the sources of emissions.
So climate progress means first curbing the carbon output of the wealthier among us. The richest 1% of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 as the 5 billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity, according.