Veille 2.1

Misguided policies are hurting the poorest in society; our focus should be on reducing inequality not increasing GDP

Canadian author and professor of climate justice cautiously hails loss and damage agreements at Cop27. " I think the most important thing is to just find other people. Trying to think through this by yourself is a recipe for feeling like a failure and getting dispirited very, very quickly. The benefit of being part of a broader movement is knowing that some people are doing some things, and other people are doing other things, and nobody has to do everything."

The climate crisis has begun to disrupt human societies by severely affecting the very foundations of human livelihood and social organisation. Climate impacts are not equally distributed across the world: on average, low- and middle-income countries suffer greater impacts than their richer counterparts. At the same time, the climate crisis is also marked by significant inequalities within countries. Recent research reveals a high concentration of global greenhouse gas emissions among a relatively small fraction of the population, living in emerging and rich countries. In addition, vulnerability to numerous climate impacts is strongly linked to income and wealth, not just between countries but also within them.

Report and executive summary

Capitalism isn’t what it used to be. Since 2008, critics of the world’s dominant economic system have been lamenting its imperviousness to change. And for good reason. In earlier epochs, financial crises and pandemics wrought economic transformation. In our own, they seem to have yielded more of the same. Before the 2008 crash, global capitalism was characterized by organized labor’s weakness, rising inequality within nations, and a growth model that offset mediocre wage gains with asset-price appreciation. All of these have remained features of the world’s economic order.

Un nouveau rapport du World Inequality Lab (WIR 2022) montre que les personnes les plus riches libèrent de plus grandes quantités de dioxyde de carbone que les personnes à moyens et faibles revenus

Selon les calculs du World Inequality Lab, le patrimoine est très inégalement réparti sur la planète. Exemple le plus extrême : les 1% des personnes les plus riches possèdent près de deux fois plus que les 90% des plus pauvres.

Le rapport 2022 sur les inégalités du World Inequality Lab, publié mardi, souligne que les ultra-riches ont énormément profité de la crise sanitaire du Covid-19, qui a creusé encore davantage les inégalités de patrimoine. Pour y remédier, les économistes ayant participé à l'étude, dont Lucas Chancel et Thomas Piketty, proposent une imposition progressive du patrimoine à l'échelle mondiale.

Pandering to the rich has got us into this mess. The correlation between wealth and polluting behaviour could not be clearer

As a leading climate scientist, Paola Arias doesn’t need to look far to see the world changing. Shifting rain patterns threaten water supplies in her home city of Medellín, Colombia, while rising sea levels endanger the country’s coastline. She isn’t confident that international leaders will slow global warming or that her own government can handle the expected fallout, such as mass migrations and civil unrest over rising inequality. With such an uncertain future, she thought hard several years ago about whether to have children.

Publiée ce mercredi par le World Inequality Lab (WIL), une étude a conclu que les individus les plus aisés polluent bien davantage que les plus pauvres sur la planète. A quelques jours de la COP26, les chercheurs estiment que les populations les plus riches devraient faire l’objet de mesures d’imposition ciblées.

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.