- Jul 2023
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www.nature.com www.nature.com
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- for: carbon inequality, w2w, leverage point - climate change, 1%, inequality, wealth tax
- title
- The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
- authors
- Kristian S. Nielsen
- Kimberly A. Nicholas
- Felix Creutzig
- Thomas Dietz
- Paul C. Stern
- date
- Sept 30, 2021 -source
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00900-y
- abstract
- People with high socioeconomic status disproportionally affect energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions directly
- through their consumption and
- indirectly through their financial and social resources.
- However, few climate change mitigation initiatives have targeted this population segment,
- and the potential of such initiatives remains insufficiently researched.
- In this Perspective, we analyse key characteristics of high-socioeconomic-status people and explore five roles through which they have a disproportionate impact on energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions and potentially on climate change mitigation, namely as:
- consumers,
- investors,
- role models,
- organizational participants and
- citizens.
- We examine what is known about their disproportionate impact via consumption and
- explore their potential influence on greenhouse gas emissions through all five roles.
- We suggest that future research should focus on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by high-socioeconomic-status people and to align their
- investments,
- organizational choices and
- actions as social and political change agents
- with climate change mitigation goals.
- People with high socioeconomic status disproportionally affect energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions directly
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scheerpost.com scheerpost.com
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- for: inequality, 1%, elites, carbon inequality, leverage point, leverage point - climate change, oxfam
- quote
- Richest 1% Took 2/3rds of Global Wealth Since 2020
- Richest 1% increased wealth in 2020 and 2021 twice as much as 99% of Population Earned
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-
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"In the paper we sketch five different roles
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for: carbon inequality, W2W, leverage point
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five leverage points
- consumer.
- investors
- lobbyist
- influencer
- citizen
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- for: w2w, elites, top 1%, 1%, leverage point
- title
- How the rich wreck the climate (and how to stop them)
- source
-
- Nov 2021
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www.annualreviews.org www.annualreviews.org
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A final cluster gathers lenses that explore phenomena that are arguably more elastic and with the potential to both indirectly maintain and explicitly reject and reshape existing norms. Many of the topics addressed here can be appropriately characterized as bottom-up, with strong and highly diverse cultural foundations. Although they are influenced by global and regional social norms, the expert framing of institutions, and the constraints of physical infrastructure (from housing to transport networks), they are also domains of experimentation, new norms, and cultural change. Building on this potential for either resisting or catalyzing change, the caricature chosen here is one of avian metaphor and myth: the Ostrich and Phoenix cluster. Ostrich-like behavior—keeping heads comfortably hidden in the sand—is evident in different ways across the lenses of inequity (Section 5.1), high-carbon lifestyles (Section 5.2), and social imaginaries (Section 5.3), which make up this cluster. Yet, these lenses also point to the power of ideas, to how people can thrive beyond dominant norms, and to the possibility of rapid cultural change in societies—all forms of transformation reminiscent of the mythological phoenix born from the ashes of its predecessor. It is conceivable that this cluster could begin to redefine the boundaries of analysis that inform the Enabler cluster, which in turn has the potential to erode the legitimacy of the Davos cluster. The very early signs of such disruption are evident in some of the following sections and are subsequently elaborated upon in the latter part of the discussion.
The bottom-up nature of this cluster makes it the focus area for civil society movements, human inner transformation (HIT) approaches and cultural methodologies.
Changing the mindset or paradigm from which the system arises is the most powerful place to intervene in a system as Donella Meadows pointed out decades ago in her research on system leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
The sleeping giant of billions of potential change actors remains dormant. How do we awaken them and mobilize them. If we can do this, it can constitute the emergence of a third unidentified actor in system change.
The Stop Reset Go (SRG) initiative is focused on this thematic lens, bottom-up, rapid whole system change, with Deep Humanity (DH) as the open-source praxis to address the needed shift in worldview advocated by Meadows. One of the Deep Humanity programs is based on addressing the psychological deficits of the wealthy, and transforming them into heroes for the transition, by redirecting their WEALTH-to-WELLth.
There are a number of strategic demographics that can be targeted in methodical evidence-based ways. Each of these is a leverage point and can bring about social tipping points.
A number of 2021 reports characterize the outsized impact of the top 1% and top 10% of humanity. Unless their luxury, high ecological footprint behavior is reeled in, humanity won't stand a chance. Annotation of Oxfam report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foxfamilibrary.openrepository.com%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10546%2F621305%2Fbn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf&group=__world__ Annotation of Hot or Cool report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotorcool.org%2Fhc-posts%2Frelease-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles%2F&group=__world__
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