The French chapters of the environmental organizations Oxfam and Greenpeace warned today about the impact of the actions of the richest on climate change with the suggestive phrase “billionaires make the planet burn.”
In a report, they denounced that while 63 French owners of great financial wealth emit as many greenhouse gases as half of the country’s households, the State chooses “to look the other way.”
These billionaires release with their businesses the equivalent of 152 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which promotes global warming, the same amount that Denmark, Finland and Sweden emit together, they stressed.
According to estimates by Oxfam and Greenpeace, the Mulliez family alone is responsible for as many polluting gas emissions as 11 percent of French households or the entire population of New Aquitaine, a region inhabited by nearly six million people.
The report specifies that it is a new way of measuring the environmental consequences of the participation of billionaires in polluting companies.
Before, greenhouse gas emissions from your lifestyle and consumption were calculated through your yachts, private planes and other sources, he says.
Oxfam and Greenpeace repudiated that the French are called upon to make greater efforts against climate change, while large companies are not subject to obligations aimed at protecting the planet.
Such inequality calls into question the collective challenge of the ecological transition, since “carbon taxation” weighs disproportionately on the poorest, relative to the richest, they questioned.
Environmental organizations demanded an additional tax for companies that do not respect the Paris Agreement against climate change, which in their opinion would contribute 17 billion euros to public finances in France.
