Is It Time to Worry About Your Personal Carbon Footprint?

In a possible indication of more shaming to come, the carbon footprints of billionaires are being aired. Most of us non-yacht-owners can breathe a sigh of relief. Yet, our carbon footprint may become as important in the future as our credit score is today.

The Carbon Footprint of Capitalist Kingpins

The carbon cost of expensive possessions is roughly equivalent to their monetary cost. For many members of the super-rich class, the biggest ecological vice is owning a yacht, followed by private planes and extensive homes.

In a naming-and-shaming exercise, the environmental group, EcoWatch calculated the carbon footprint of billionaires for 2018—at least those whose assets are a matter of public record. This excludes billionaires obsessed with privacy, such as, perhaps, drug kingpins and corrupt political leaders.

The biggest billionaire polluter was Roman Abramovich (whose fortune was estimated at $148 billion). Abramovich had a carbon footprint of 33,859 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is as much as 6,771 average people on the planet who generate about 5 tons annually—or 2,257 Americans, given that we generate about 15 tons each.

Abramovich's biggest vice was owning a huge yacht that is comparable to the size of a cruise ship. The nine biggest carbon polluters all owned large yachts.

Even billionaires can be environmentally conscious and some of the richest individuals do not rank near the top for billionaire polluters. Bill Gates, whose net worth was $124 billion, generated just 7,493 tons of carbon, equivalent to just 500 ordinary Americans. Elon Musk, then the second richest person on the list, had the carbon footprint of just 139 Americans. This means he was more environmentally responsible than his billionaire peers but hardly set a standard to emulate. Perhaps conscious of the optics, he subsequently sold his six houses.

Being a heavy polluter may be inevitable for a capitalist kingpin but there are not many of them around. We need to be more worried about the carbon cost of ordinary individuals whose lifestyle is more consequential for the planet.

The Carbon Cost of a Child

It is not hard to avoid buying a yacht or a private jet, but most people reproduce, even in developed countries (1) and this single activity was implicated as the most dangerous to the planet.

It was estimated that having one child less can reduce carbon by 58.6 metric tons (per year), far more than any other individual response to climate change. This calculation proceeded on the assumption that your child is also likely to reproduce, generating more carbon pollution. It did not take into account the possibility that citizens of the future will behave more responsibly—perhaps thanks to wiser government policies that would continue the decline in emissions already in place.

When an adjustment was made for tighter policies of the future, the estimated carbon cost of reproduction fell by an order of magnitude but remained the single biggest component of most people's carbon footprint.

How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Oil companies love to discuss individual carbon footprints because it allows them to shift the blame away from themselves to the consumers of their product. Even so, it is better if everyone does take responsibility for their own climate impact and reduces their footprint, if possible.

If a person wishes to reduce their carbon emissions, they won't get far by having a plant-based diet, using LEDs, or recycling, all of which have trivial impacts despite their popularity. Apart from avoiding reproduction, the biggest reduction a person can make in their carbon footprint is by going car-free.

For most Americans, this is impractical given the great size of the country and the poverty of public transportation systems. So it is important that cars are made as fuel-efficient as possible.

By avoiding one ocean-crossing plane ride each year, a person reduces their carbon footprint by a tenth (or 1.5 tons of carbon). Another worthwhile measure is to switch from fossil fuels to green heating.

These conclusions are not encouraging to those who want to do something about climate change by altering their behavior. Yet there is hope. A small annual purchase of carbon offsets or another similar action can shrink your carbon footprint to zero. You don't have to be a billionaire to salve your conscience.