Those who earn the most, pollute the most

Exhaust.Photo: pixabay.com

Those with the highest incomes in Norway emit approximately three times as much CO2 as those with the lowest incomes, according to new Norwegian research.

Two researchers at the University of Oslo have demonstrated a correlation between income and the size of a CO2 footprint, reported the newspaper Klassekampen.

‘We have tried to calculate how the carbon footprint varies between different income groups, and have concluded that in Norway, there is an approximately one-to-one ratio between income and emissions’, said PhD student Elisabeth T. Isaksen.
Together with Patrick A. Narbel, she has published the results in an article in the journal ‘Ecological Economics’.
In 2014, they found that the 10 percent who represent the richest households in Norway had a 2.9 times higher income than the 10 percent at the bottom.

The results of the research indicated that these higher income groups pollute at a rate three times that of the poor.

‘This is an argument for more progressive taxation. In addition to reducing economic inequality, such a tax would cut emissions’, says Anders Skonhoft, professor of economics at the university.

‘Everyone does not share equal blame for greenhouse gas emissions. The rich emit much more than the poor. This is an aspect of the subject that is rarely, or never, a part of the climate debate’, said Professor Skonhoft.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today