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Climate: why the study targeting billionaires is problematic


Ihe NGOs Greenpeace and Oxfam have published a short study in which they explain that the financial assets of 63 billionaires emit as much greenhouse gas as half of the French. To arrive at this comparison, the NGOs considered the stakes of billionaires in their main company: Auchan for Gérard Mulliez, CMA-CGM for Rodolphe Saadé, Lactalis for Emmanuel Besnier… This comparison is problematic on several counts.

Shareholding concentration is a subject that can be discussed from a social or economic angle, but it is not specifically an environmental issue. Indeed, if the companies mentioned in the study had a dispersed shareholding, their carbon footprint would not be lower.

It is not the fact that a company is owned by a small number of people or not that makes its sector of activity compatible with carbon neutrality, or that conditions the efforts it can make to reduce its carbon footprint.

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What about the role of companies?

If the companies of MM. Mulliez and Saadé exist because they have customers who pay for their services. It is therefore not legitimate to impute to these people the entire carbon footprint of their company, in proportion to their actions, while clearing their customers of their responsibility.

Let’s take an example: if I buy a heavy car and use it for all my trips, the CO2 I emit more the responsibility of the shareholders of the oil companies that sold me the fuel, or mine? It was me who chose to buy such a vehicle and use it so much. Responsibility is therefore at least shared.

Focusing on the supply side by targeting companies – or the billionaires who own them – while denying the service they provide is an environmentally sterile approach. If a company produces goods or provides services that are incompatible with carbon neutrality, it is not enough to make it cease its activity. Since it responds to a request, others would take over. And if none takes over, the shortage risks losing people’s support for decarbonization issues.

Hoping to wean the population off oil through shortages if the oil companies stopped investing under pressure from NGOs would above all risk arousing movements of the Yellow Vests type. If we put an end to maritime transport, all the cheap products resulting from globalization to which the population considers they are entitled (smartphones, computers, fruit out of season, etc.) will become economically inaccessible.

To advance carbon neutrality in a democracy, it is essential to succeed in reducing the demand – rather than the supply – of unsustainable goods and services: this can involve educating the population to make them aware of the impact of his way of life, by the pressure on the political authorities so that they change the regulations, etc.

The impact of billionaire lifestyles

Rich people have greater impacts on the environment and the climate than poor people, due to their way of life: larger and more numerous dwellings, more travel and with more carbon-intensive modes of transport, higher consumption in general, etc. . The subject of social justice is therefore a central element when we talk about decarbonization. But it must be treated correctly and does not allow scabrous accounts intended to point to artificial culprits.

More than useless, this approach is dangerous: how to motivate the population to make efforts to reduce its carbon footprint if it is explained (wrongly) that 63 people in France would have a carbon footprint equivalent to that of half the population?

Who is really acting for the climate?

There is finally a common point between companies, politicians and NGOs: most are not fundamentally interested in environmental and climate issues but in the perception of them, respectively, by their clientele, their electorate, their activists/ members. The challenge is less to be effective on these subjects than to give the impression of being so, without constraining the segment of the population served.

A company will not seek to constrain its customers. A politician may recognize the seriousness of the climate emergency if it worries his constituents, without resolutely attacking the cause of the problem if it must require effort or go against the convictions of his electorate.

Finally, many people sincerely concerned about the environment join NGOs to have the feeling of taking action. But who wants to understand that it is our lifestyles that, in large part, are the problem? That we will not respond to the climate emergency without profoundly changing our relationship with consumption? Some NGOs therefore respond to their request: they point to easy culprits, necessarily others. Failing to advance ecology, it is reassuring. We are not responsible. It’s up to others to act…

* Maxime Cordiez is an engineer in the energy sector.


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