In a nutshell: The world is trying to cut down on carbon emissions through the likes of renewable energies and other environmentally friendly initiatives. But it seems one of the best ways to reduce these planet-warming gases would be for billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to stop using their private jets and yachts so much. According to a new report, members of the super-rich create the same amount of carbon emissions in 90 minutes that an average person does over their entire lifetime.
Oxfam, the British NGO that focuses on addressing global poverty, published a report examining carbon inequality. It looks at how the yachts, jets, and polluting investments of 50 of the world's richest billionaires are accelerating the climate crisis.
The results make for startling reading. Oxfam identified private jets belonging to 23 of the 50 richest people in the world and found that, on average, these billionaires each took 184 flights – spending 425 hours in the air – in 2023. That was equal to an average of 2,074 tonnes of carbon a year, or as much carbon as the average person would produce in 300 years, or 2,000 years' worth for someone in the global poorest 50%.
As bad as jets are, superyachts are worse. Oxfam found that the average annual carbon footprint of each of the 23 yachts belonging to 18 billionaires to be 5,672 tonnes, three times the emissions of their private jets. This is equivalent to 860 years of emissions for the average person.
Across a 12-month period, Jeff Bezos' two private jets spent almost 25 days in the air, releasing as much carbon as a US Amazon employee would emit in 207 years. In the same period, Elon Musk's two private jets generated 5,497 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or an average of 15 tonnes per day. That's the equivalent of 11 average people's emissions across their entire lifetimes.
It's not just the their luxury toys polluting the world. Of the 50 billionaires examined in the study, around 40% of their investments were in emissions-intensive industries like oil, mining, and shipping, with average emissions of around 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. That's around 340 times their emissions from private jets and superyachts combined, and each billionaire's investment emissions are equivalent to almost 400,000 years of consumption emissions by the average person.
The bottom line is that Musk, Bezos, and other billionaires individually create more carbon dioxide in 90 minutes than average people do in their entire lives.
Oxfam writes that in the coming century, 1.5 million excess deaths will be caused by the consumption emissions of the richest 1% – those with incomes of at least $140,000 – between 2015 and 2019.
"This report shows that fairer taxes on extreme wealth are crucial to accelerate climate action and fight inequality – starting with private jets and superyachts," said Chiara Liguori, Oxfam's senior climate justice policy adviser. "It's clear these luxury toys aren't just symbols of excess; they're a direct threat to people and the planet."
