The world’s 10% of rich people are the biggest contributors to global warming, a new study revealed.
According to Al Jazeera, a research study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, found that the wealthiest 10 per percent of the world’s people are responsible for two-thirds of the global warming since 1990.
A lead author, Sarah Schoengart, told AFP, “We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts. It’s a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.”
As per the study, 1% of the rich people contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon as compared to the global average.
The co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner explained, “If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50 per percent of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990. Addressing this imbalance is crucial for fair and effective climate action.”
Notably, emissions from the richest 10% in China and the US, who are responsible for half of the global pollution, have made heatwaves 2-3 times worse.
Financial investment fuels climate change, not lifestyle
The researchers also highlighted that more than lifestyle and personal consumption, emissions are embedded in financial investment fuels the climate change.
Schoengart said, “Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions. Instead, we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth.”
“We found that wealthy emitters play a major role in driving climate extremes, which provides strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions,” she added.
The researchers argued that the richest people contributed the most to climate change and urged making actions that not only highlighted the responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society but also made them pay for the harm they are creating.
