'Golden climate crisis for the Scrooges, they make 400 times the CO2 of a common person'

The climate crisis is convenient for some: according to Oxfam, in a single year, the richest 0.1% of the planet - around 8 million people - emit more CO₂ than almost 3.5 billion human beings belonging to the poorest half of humanity. On average, the contribution of a single super-rich person to the heat waves plaguing the planet is 400 times greater than that of an ordinary person.

This is the photograph taken by the new Oxfam report, released on the eve of COP31 on the climate, scheduled for November 9th in Antalya, Turkey. "The climate crisis is often described as a challenge that should unite all of humanity, but what we are witnessing goes exactly in the opposite direction", explains Francesco Petrelli, spokesperson for Oxfam Italia. The wealthiest 0.1% of the world today produces triple emissions compared to the entire sub-Saharan Africa, 1.3 billion people. And while the poorest remain helpless in the face of increasingly extreme events, the super-rich "find ways out: hyper-technological underground bunkers, private firefighting teams or policies to cover their losses". According to Petrelli "the super-rich first set the planet on fire and then present us with the bill for the fire extinguishers".