Thursday, July 01, 2021

Do the wealthy care about climate change?


I've been thinking a lot these days about climate change. I've also been thinking a lot about income inequality. Then I decided to consider how one affects the ability to deal with the other. I may be out to lunch on this train of thought, but here we go anyway.

In much the same way that rich people and wealthy executives don't see, are not affected by, and perhaps even don't care much about wealth inequality and poverty, they probably don't care much about climate change either. I hope I'm mistaken about this, but I'll explain why I think it's true.

Wealthy people have air conditioning. Everywhere. In the office, at home, in the garage, in the car, in the yacht even. So they're not really bothered by the heat because they rarely have to endure it. If you're wealthy enough you don't even have to worry about going 'out' in the heat because you pay others to do that for you.

Wealthy people usually have pools. Again, heat is not as much of an issue when you have a pool.

Wealthy people sweat less because there's no manual labour. You can pay people to do that for you. Both at work and at home.

If a geographic area is under threat from rising ocean levels as a result of climate change, wealthy people can just move.

If a wealthy person's house gets burned down by a heat wave induced wildfire, their insurance will pay for a replacement.

In contrast, low income people don't necessarily have access to air conditioning, private pools, hired help and property insurance.

No comments: