{"id":48613,"date":"2019-09-22T17:40:56","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T22:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48613"},"modified":"2019-09-22T17:40:59","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T22:40:59","slug":"for-the-sake-of-life-on-earth-we-must-put-a-limit-on-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48613","title":{"rendered":"For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just the megarich: increased spending power leads us all to inflict environmental damage. It\u2019s time for a radical plan<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Illustration: Bill Bragg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is not quite true that behind every great fortune lies a great crime<\/a>. Musicians and novelists, for example, can become extremely rich by giving other people pleasure. But it does appear to be universally true that in front of every great fortune lies a great crime. Immense wealth translates automatically into immense environmental impacts, regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. The very wealthy, almost as a matter of definition, are committing ecocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago, I received a letter from a worker at a British private airport. \u201cI see things that really shouldn\u2019t be happening in 2019,\u201d he wrote. Every day he sees Global 7000 jets, Gulfstream G650s and even Boeing 737s take off from the airport carrying a single passenger, mostly flying to Russia and the US. The private Boeing 737s, built to take 174 passengers, are filled at the airport with around 25,000 litres of fuel. That\u2019s as much fossil energy as a small African town might use in a year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where are these single passengers going? Perhaps to visit one of their superhomes, constructed and run at vast environmental cost, or to take a trip on their superyacht, which might burn 500 litres of diesel an hour\u00a0just ticking over<\/a>, and which is built and furnished with rare materials extracted at the expense of beautiful places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t be surprised to learn that when Google convened a meeting<\/a> of the rich and famous at the Verdura resort in Sicily in July to discuss climate breakdown, its delegates arrived in 114 private jets and a fleet of megayachts, and drove around the island in supercars. Even when they mean well, the ultrarich cannot help trashing the living world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth It\u2019s not just the megarich: increased spending power leads us all to inflict environmental damage. It\u2019s time for a radical plan It is not quite true that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Musicians and novelists, for example, can become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[19026,6112,536,27234],"class_list":["post-48613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-ecocide","tag-george-monbiot","tag-money","tag-ultrarich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48614,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48613\/revisions\/48614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}