Because of savior of humanity
Why billionaire climate projects are dangerous
By Heike Buchter
November 25, 2023, 4:03 p.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
America’s billionaires are known not only for their luxurious lifestyles, but also for their generous donations, often to projects to save the world. But what the richest of the rich think is helpful may actually do more harm than good to humanity.
The super-rich aren’t just bad for our planet, they’re particularly bad. This is how the latest report by the poverty-fighting organization Oxfam can be summarized in one sentence. According to this, the richest percent of the world’s population caused around as many greenhouse gases in 2019 as the five billion people who make up the poorer two-thirds.
In Germany, the richest percent of residents caused a total of 83.3 tons of CO₂ emissions per capita per year in 2019, more than 15 times as much as the poorer half of the German population, according to the report presented by the aid organization earlier this week “Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99 Percent” revealed – just a few days before the UN climate summit in Dubai, which begins on November 30th.
The conference is a further attempt to rally the international community to the 1.5 degree target to limit temperature rises, which are becoming increasingly unlikely to be met. The report’s statistics prove what Oxfam has been denouncing for years. There is a direct connection between humanity’s biggest problems: the climate crisis and extreme social inequality. Why are billionaires and multimillionaires so much worse for the climate?
There are theirs Private jets and your Yachts, which can be better described as floating palaces. The city villas and country estates, of which the super-rich usually own an entire collection in the most exclusive corners of our world. Above all, they benefit from their investments and holdings in companies that pollute the environment. Since a large proportion of the super-rich derive their wealth from the financial market and their investments, they contribute disproportionately to fueling the climate crisis.
The elite is undermining the common fight against global warming. Because here too the burdens are unevenly distributed. Even in wealthy Germany, purchasing a new heater or an electric car poses a financial challenge for many households – or is simply unaffordable. No wonder that the commitment of the super-rich to the climate seems like hypocrisy. Many in the super-rich club consider themselves to be the saviors of humanity.
There is hardly a well-known billionaire who does not have a WSP, a “World-Saving Project”. Elon Musk, for example, whose current fortune is $219 billion, has offered $100 million as a prize to whoever develops affordable technology Can extract and bind 1000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.
Bill Gates, currently worth around $134 billion, is convinced that our energy problem can be solved with the help of nuclear power. And unlike normal earners, he can also realize his vision. He doesn’t have in mind the nuclear reactors that are in use today, but rather a new type of power plant that should be smaller and cheaper. “Sodium” is the name of the model that will soon be built in the US state of Wyoming, because the reactor is cooled with liquid sodium instead of water. Experts are critical of the project, but the US Department of Energy has already promised support – and subsidies.
The financial journalist and author Heike Buchter has been reporting from Wall Street since 2001. In 2015, she put the largest asset manager in the spotlight with her book “Blackrock.” “Who will be a billionaire?” is the title of her current book.
(Photo: Heike Buchter, photographer Stefan Falke)
A new nuclear age, sponsored by the super-rich, seems downright modest in the face of projects that want to “hack” our climate and use technology to stop or even reverse global warming. The more genteel term is geoengineering. This refers to ideas such as Solar Radiation Management (SRM). The idea is to spray aerosols into the upper atmosphere, probably from a fleet of very high-flying aircraft. The aerosols – various substances are being discussed – are intended to darken the sun slightly and thus cool the atmosphere. One of the fans of this approach is George Soros, who presented his plans to initiate such an SRM project and thus “freeze” the Arctic again at the Munich Security Conference in February 2023. “The message is clear: human influence has destroyed a previously stable system and it will take human ingenuity, both locally and internationally, to repair it,” he said.
Scientists are deeply concerned. In an open letter, hundreds of them called on governments, the United Nations and other actors to take immediate political action to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option. It’s not just the fact that billionaires are giving money to new, potentially dangerous technologies that is problematic. The problem is that they are now often the ones who make the decisive decisions about which technologies should be advanced. Men who apparently draw the conclusion from the fact that they have earned a lot of money with software in Silicon Valley or on the financial markets that they know the right solutions to even the biggest problems facing humanity. And thanks to their wealth, they can turn this certainty into real projects almost unhindered.
Back in 2014, human geographers Iain Hay and Samantha Muller examined the phenomenon of what they called the “golden age of philanthropy.” They found that since the late 1990s, charitable bequests from the super-rich grew to hundreds of billions of dollars – and there appeared to be no end to the “generosity” in sight. Their sober conclusion: “Super-philanthropy diverts attention and resources from the failures of today’s manifestations of capitalism.” Just as the projects to save the world distract attention from the fact that the climate crisis is also caused by the donations of billionaires.