‘A Crime of Extreme Inequality’: Richest 0.1% Generate More Carbon Pollution Than Half of Humanity

The richest 0.1% of humanity generates more planet-heating carbon pollution than nearly half of the global population combined, according to an Oxfam analysis released late Monday as world leaders prepared to gather in Türkiye next month for the United Nations climate summit.

The new analysis provides an updated look at global elites’ outsized contribution to a climate crisis that disproportionately impacts the poorest segments of the global population through increasingly devastating heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather, causing death, destruction, and mass displacement worldwide. Oxfam estimates that a person in the richest 0.1% “has contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heatwaves than someone in the poorest 50%.” 

The 8 million richest people in the world combined produce “over three times more carbon pollution than the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa”—around 1.3 billion people.