![]() We combed 82 databases of public records to document billionaires’ houses, vehicles, aircraft and yachts. ![]() This excluded most of the superrich in Asia and the Middle East. ![]() A random or representatives sample of billionaire carbon footprints is impossible because most wealthy people shy away from publicity, so we had to focus on those whose consumption is public knowledge. To pick a sample of billionaires, we started with the 2020 Forbes List of 2,095 billionaires. Transportation and real estate make up the lion’s share of most people’s carbon footprint, so we focused on calculating those categories for each billionaire. For example, a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to our calculations, making it by the far worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint. The wealthy own yachts, planes and multiple mansions, all of which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. We found that billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than those of average Americans. As anthropologists who study energy and consumer culture, we wanted to examine how all that wealth translated into consumption and the resulting carbon footprint. Those are astronomical numbers, and it’s hard to get one’s head around them without some context. Altogether, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth surge over $1.9 trillion in 2020, according to Forbes. Musk isn’t alone in seeing a significant increase in wealth during a year of pandemic, recession and death. Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have been vying for the world’s richest person ranking all year after the former’s wealth soared a staggering US$160 billion in 2020, putting him briefly in the top spot. ![]()
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