University of Cambridge
The personal carbon footprint of the richest people in society is grossly underestimated, both by the rich themselves and by those on middle and lower incomes, no matter which country they come from. At the same time, both the rich and the poor drastically overestimate the carbon footprint of the poorest people.
社会上最富有的人的个人碳足迹被严重低估，无论是富人本身还是中低收入者，无论他们来自哪个国家。与此同时，富人和穷人都大大高估了最贫困人口的碳足迹。
An international group of researchers, led by the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge, surveyed 4,000 people from Denmark, India, Nigeria and the United States about inequality in personal carbon footprints – the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by a person’s activities – within their own country. Although it is well-known that there is a large gap between the carbon footprint of the richest and poorest in society, it’s been unclear whether individuals were aware of this inequality. The four countries chosen for the survey are all different in terms of wealth, lifestyle and culture. Survey participants also differed in their personal income, with half of participants belonging to the top 10% of income in their country. The vast majority of participants across the four countries overestimated the average personal carbon footprint of the poorest 50% and underestimated those of the richest 10% and 1%.
由哥本哈根商学院、巴塞尔大学和剑桥大学领导的一个国际研究小组对来自丹麦、印度、尼日利亚和美国的 4,000 人进行了关于个人碳足迹（产生的温室气体总量）不平等的调查一个人在自己国家内的活动。尽管众所周知，社会上最富有的人和最贫穷的人的碳足迹之间存在巨大差距，但尚不清楚个人是否意识到这种不平等。被选中进行调查的四个国家在财富、生活方式和文化方面都有所不同。调查参与者的个人收入也存在差异，一半的参与者属于本国收入最高的 10%。这四个国家的绝大多数参与者高估了最贫困 50% 人口的平均个人碳足迹，而低估了最富有 10% 和 1% 人口的平均个人碳足迹。
However, participants from the top 10% were more likely to support certain climate policies, such as increasing the price of electricity during peak periods, taxing red meat consumption or subsidising carbon dioxide removal technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The researchers say that this may reflect generally higher education levels among high earners, a greater ability to absorb price-based policies or a stronger preference for technological solutions to the climate crisis. The results are reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. Although the concept of a personal carbon or environmental footprint has been used for over 40 years, it became widely popularised in the mid-2000s, when the fossil fuel company BP ran a large advertising campaign encouraging people to determine and reduce their personal carbon footprint.
然而，来自前 10% 的参与者更有可能支持某些气候政策，例如提高高峰时段的电价、对红肉消费征税或补贴碳捕获和储存等二氧化碳去除技术。研究人员表示，这可能反映出高收入者普遍受教育程度较高，吸收基于价格的政策的能力更强，或者更倾向于采用技术解决气候危机。研究结果发表在《自然气候变化》杂志上。尽管个人碳足迹或环境足迹的概念已经使用了 40 多年，但它在 2000 年代中期开始广泛普及，当时化石燃料公司 BP 开展了大型广告活动，鼓励人们确定并减少个人碳足迹。
“There are definitely groups out there who would like to push the responsibility of reducing carbon emissions away from corporations and onto individuals, which is problematic,” said co-author Dr Ramit Debnath, Assistant Professor and Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge. “However, personal carbon footprints can illustrate the profound inequality within and between countries and help people identify how to live in a more climate-friendly way.” Previous research has shown widespread misperceptions about how certain consumer behaviours affect an individual's carbon footprint. For example, recycling, shutting off the lights when leaving a room and avoiding plastic packaging are lower-impact behaviours that are overestimated in terms of how much they can reduce one’s carbon footprint. On the other end, the impact of behaviours such as red meat consumption, heating and cooling homes, and air travel all tend to be underestimated. However, there is limited research on whether these misperceptions extend to people’s perceptions of the composition and scale of personal carbon footprints and their ability to make comparisons between different groups.
“肯定有一些团体希望将减少碳排放的责任从企业推到个人身上，这是有问题的，”合著者、剑桥大学助理教授兼剑桥零排放研究员拉米特·德布纳特博士说。 “然而，个人碳足迹可以说明国家内部和国家之间的深刻不平等，并帮助人们确定如何以更加气候友好的方式生活。”先前的研究表明，人们对某些消费者行为如何影响个人碳足迹存在广泛的误解。例如，回收利用、离开房间时关灯以及避免使用塑料包装等影响较小的行为，但在减少碳足迹方面却被高估了。另一方面，红肉消费、家庭供暖和制冷以及航空旅行等行为的影响往往被低估。然而，关于这些误解是否延伸到人们对个人碳足迹的构成和规模的看法以及他们在不同群体之间进行比较的能力的研究还很有限。
The four countries selected for the survey (Denmark, India, Nigeria and the US) were chosen due to their different per-capita carbon emissions and their levels of economic inequality. Within each country, approximately 1,000 participants were surveyed, with half of each participant group from the top 10% of their country and the other half from the bottom 90%. Participants were asked to estimate the average personal carbon footprints specific to three income groups (the bottom 50%, the top 10%, and the top 1% of income) within their country. Most participants overestimated the average personal carbon footprint for the bottom 50% of income and underestimated the average footprints for the top 10% and top 1% of income. “These countries are very different, but we found the rich are pretty similar no matter where you go, and their concerns are different to the rest of society,” said Debnath. “There’s a huge contrast between billionaires travelling by private jet while the rest of us drink with soggy paper straws: one of those activities has a big impact on an individual carbon footprint, and one doesn’t.”
选择参与调查的四个国家（丹麦、印度、尼日利亚和美国）是因为它们的人均碳排放量和经济不平等程度不同。在每个国家/地区，大约有1,000 名参与者接受了调查，每个参与者群体中的一半来自本国排名前10% 的人，另一半来自排名后 90% 的人。参与者被要求估计其国家内三个收入群体（收入最低的 50%、收入最高的 10% 和收入最高的 1%）的平均个人碳足迹。大多数参与者高估了收入最低 50% 的人的平均个人碳足迹，而低估了收入最高 10% 和最高 1% 的人的平均碳足迹。 “这些国家非常不同，但我们发现无论你走到哪里，富人都非常相似，他们的担忧与社会其他人不同，”德纳特说。 “乘坐私人飞机旅行的亿万富翁与我们其他人用湿透的纸吸管喝酒之间存在着巨大的反差：其中一项活动对个人碳足迹有很大影响，而另一种则不会。”
The researchers also looked at whether people’s ideas of carbon footprint inequality were related to their support for different climate policies. They found that Danish and Nigerian participants who underestimated carbon footprint inequality were generally less supportive of climate policies. They also found that Indian participants from the top 10% were generally more supportive of climate policies, potentially reflecting their higher education and greater resources. “Poorer people have more immediate concerns, such as how they’re going to pay their rent, or support their families,” said first author Dr Kristian Steensen Nielsen from Copenhagen Business School. “But across all income groups, people want real solutions to the climate crisis, whether those are regulatory or technological. However, the people with the highest carbon footprints bear the greatest responsibility for changing their lifestyles and reducing their footprints.” After learning about the actual carbon footprint inequality, most participants found it slightly unfair, with those in Denmark and the United States finding it the most unfair. However, people from the top 10% generally found the inequality fairer than the general population, except in India. “This could be because they’re trying to justify their larger carbon footprints,” said Debnath.
研究人员还研究了人们对碳足迹不平等的看法是否与他们对不同气候政策的支持有关。他们发现，低估碳足迹不平等的丹麦和尼日利亚参与者普遍不太支持气候政策。他们还发现，排名前 10% 的印度参与者普遍更支持气候政策，这可能反映出他们受过高等教育并拥有更多资源。 “穷人有更直接的担忧，比如他们将如何支付房租或养家糊口，”哥本哈根商学院的第一作者克里斯蒂安·斯廷森·尼尔森博士说。 “但在所有收入群体中，人们都希望能够真正解决气候危机，无论是监管方面还是技术方面。然而，碳足迹最高的人对改变生活方式和减少碳足迹负有最大的责任。”在了解实际的碳足迹不平等后，大多数参与者认为这有点不公平，其中丹麦和美国的参与者认为最不公平。然而，除印度外，来自顶层10% 的人普遍认为不平等现象比普通民众更公平。 “这可能是因为他们试图证明自己更大的碳足迹是合理的，”黛布纳斯说。
The researchers say that more work is needed to determine the best ways to promote fairness and justice in climate action across countries, cultures and communities. “Due to their greater financial and political influence, most climate policies reflect the interests of the richest in society and rarely involve fundamental changes to their lifestyles or social status,” said Debnath. “Greater awareness and discussion of existing inequality in personal carbon footprints can help build political pressure to address these inequalities and develop climate solutions that work for all,” said Nielsen. The study also involved researchers from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Murdoch University and Oxford University. The research was supported in part by the Carlsberg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Quadrature Climate Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
研究人员表示，需要做更多的工作来确定促进跨国家、文化和社区气候行动公平和正义的最佳方式。 “由于金融和政治影响力更大，大多数气候政策反映了社会最富有人群的利益，很少涉及他们生活方式或社会地位的根本改变，”德纳特说。尼尔森表示：“提高对个人碳足迹中现有不平等现象的认识和讨论，有助于施加政治压力，以解决这些不平等问题，并制定适合所有人的气候解决方案。”这项研究还涉及吉森贾斯图斯李比希大学、默多克大学和牛津大学的研究人员。该研究得到了嘉士伯基金会、比尔和梅琳达·盖茨基金会、正交气候基金会和瑞士国家科学基金会的部分支持。
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