John Simkin

This is an important new paper. When we allocate responsibility for emissions, it's normally in terms of consumption. We tally up direct household emissions (eg, from household energy use) plus the emissions embodied in all the stuff that a household consumes. But this creates a problem, because households do not control the conditions under which that stuff is produced. The energy and production techniques, which determine the emissions content of goods and services, is decided by those who own the means of production - mostly the capitalist class, and to some extent governments. Scholars have argued that owners should therefore be held responsible for emissions from production they control, given they have the power to produce differently, such as by using renewable energy, or by investing in less damaging forms of production. When we account for private ownership-based emissions, together with government ownership-based emissions and direct household emissions, the richest 1% are responsible for 30% of global emissions, and the richest 10% are together responsible for a staggering 60%. These are the people who are driving climate breakdown. Climate change is class war. But these results should be understood as conservative. I would argue that even direct household emissions should be assessed at least in part in terms of energy-system ownership. When households cook or heat water for showers, they usually have little control over the source of the energy, i.e., whether it is fossil fuels or renewables. That is decided by the people who own the energy system. The fact that so much of our energy system is still provided by fossil fuels is not the fault of the working classes, it is the fault of those who own and control the energy system - which is mostly capitalists, and to some extent governments (which are in turn often captured by the capitalist class). So households may be responsible for the quantity of energy they use, but they cannot reasonably be held responsible for the additional emissions produced by fossil-fuel sources if renewable sources could be provided instead. Perhaps one methodological solution here would be to allocate emissions to households *as if* their energy use was provided by currently available renewables, and allocate the rest to the owners of the energy system. The paper is by @lucas_chancel and Yannic Rehm in Nature Climate Change: nature.com/articles/s41558-0…