By David Suzuki
Do you ever wonder where opposition to sensible climate policies is coming from? We know the coal, oil and gas industries have been waging a disinformation campaign for decades, hiding research from their own scientists and others that accurately predicted the disastrous consequences of using their products as intended.
But that’s not the whole story.
One issue with resolving the climate crisis is that doing so would require the world’s wealthiest people to make lifestyle changes. But many rich people — especially those who see wealth accumulation as some kind of game or goal in itself — aren’t willing to sacrifice any privilege, even if their choices are causing others to suffer.
Billionaires and their secretive organizations have joined with the fossil fuel industry to downplay or deny the impacts of a heating planet, often trying to convince the public that prudent climate solutions would hurt the poor.
A new study confirms what other research has found: the affluent among us are by far the biggest contributors to climate disruption. Our global consumer-capitalist economic system doesn’t just fuel inequality; it also creates mountains of waste, drives numerous plants and animals to extinction, fouls air, water and land and accelerates the climate problem.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, found the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world’s population (those earning over C$67,000 a year — so, many of us, including me) was responsible for two-thirds of warming from 1990 to 2020. The world’s most impoverished regions, where people have contributed little to the climate emergency, have been the most severely affected by its impacts, ranging from excessive heat and droughts to water shortages and impaired crop yields.
Those at the very top of the money chain are even more to blame. The richest one per cent were responsible for 20 per cent of global heating, and the richest 0.1 per cent accounted for eight per cent. “We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the reports states.
“Over the past two decades, extreme events attributable to climate change resulted in an annual average of US$143 billion in damages,” the report says. Who’s paying for those damages? Not the ultra-rich, even though their fortunes have increased by staggering amounts over the past years.
An Oxfam study reports, “Billionaire wealth grew by $2.8 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $7.9 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. An average of nearly four new billionaires were minted every week. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.”
Canadian billionaires have benefited greatly, according to Oxfam: “In Canada, billionaire wealth has increased by $113.4 billion in 2024. Since 2019, billionaire wealth grew by $190.3 billion with a new billionaire minted every 12 weeks in Canada while 3.8 million people live below the poverty line.”
Oxfam says, “The wealth of the world’s ten richest men grew on average by almost $140 million a day — even if they lost 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would remain billionaires. In Canada, total billionaire wealth stood at $496.7 billion owned by 65 billionaires.” Most of the wealth is “derived from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections.”
The Nature Climate Change report’s authors hope their research will influence policies, especially regarding compensation to poorer countries for climate change impacts, and will gain more acceptance for climate action.
But the problem goes beyond that. Extreme wealth inequality, pollution, species extinction and climate chaos are all symptoms of a sick system, one that isn’t serving the needs of most people.
It’s difficult to fight back when some people have enough money to influence politicians and media, while others are simply struggling to eke out a living and survive in the face of increasing extreme weather events and other climate and pollution impacts.
Averting climate catastrophe doesn’t just mean ending the fossil fuel era and protecting green spaces; it also means taxing the wealthy, cracking down on tax evaders, and implementing measures to reduce the wealth gap and corporate power. Our current economic system isn’t that old, but it’s outdated. We can and must change it.
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.
Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.
REFERENCES:
A disinformation campaign:
Billionaires and their secretive organizations:
https://davidsuzuki.org/story/canada-must-resist-anti-democratic-crusaders
Study, published in Nature Climate Change:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x
An Oxfam study:
Hope their research will influence policies:
