A recent study reveals that the majority of people, regardless of how much they earn, greatly underestimate the personal carbon footprint of the richest members of their society, while overestimating that of the poorest. This suggests that “most people, including the wealthiest, are largely unaware of the profound inequality in personal carbon footprints within their country,” study co-author Kristian Nielsen, a climate change researcher at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, told Mongabay in an email. “This is likely because many people have a limited understanding of carbon footprints, which products and services most significantly impact people’s carbon footprint, and the specifics of wealthier people’s lifestyles.” The carbon footprint is often used as a proxy for environmental impact. At an individual level, it’s a measure of how much CO2 an individual produces across their daily activities, from their mode of transportation to the food and clothes they buy. Previous research has shown that the average personal carbon footprint varies widely both between and within countries. In India, for example, the bottom 50% earners have an average personal carbon footprint of 1 metric ton of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per year, while for the top 1%, it’s about 32.4 tons, the study notes. In the U.S., the annual carbon footprint ranges from 9.7 tons for the bottom 50% earners to 269.3 tons for the top 1%. To find out if people are aware of these inequalities, researchers surveyed 4,000 individuals from Denmark, India, the U.S. and Nigeria. Half of the respondents in each country…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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