Tax the 'poor'!

Why are conservatives suspicious of the man-made global-warming hypothesis? Because they suspect that, mixed up with the science, there's a leftist political agenda. Why do leftists like the hypothesis? Partly because they care about the planet, but no doubt also because there's a leftist political agenda.
   The Guardian's report on today's mass lobby in Westminster links to a 2023 article which argues that the culprits are 'the rich'. What the accompanying graph actually reflects is that richer nations produce vastly more CO₂ per capita than poorer ones. How do you turn this into support for leftism? Rephrase it as: it's primarily the fault of the 'rich' – which for most Western readers means 'people who are much richer than me' – and then start talking about taxing billionaires. In other words, more redistribution – though in practice that tends to mean from the rich to the State rather than to the poor.

   The Guardian has redrawn a graph taken from an Oxfam publication, but kinda botched it: their version (above) looks like the huge difference is between medium and poor, with relatively little difference between medium and rich. Oxfam's original shows more clearly how the top 10% (in red) produce 50% of emissions.
   But the data could easily be used to make the opposite argument: reduce redistribution. Given that the West's population is only about 15% of the global, the 'richest 10%' might well include half the people in the West. It hardly follows that taxing a few billionaires is going to help much.
   Compared to Victorian times, European countries are far more equalised within their populations. Nearly every household has at least one car, at least one TV, at least one computer. Most take foreign holidays, consume fuel to get to work, spend liberally on Chinese gadgets, and so on.
   If intra-national redistribution from rich to poor were reduced, meaning that a few rich got richer, while a lot of middlingly well-off people got a bit poorer, that might actually have a beneficial effect on CO₂ emissions.
   I'm not advocating doing this. But I wish the Left would stop trying to exploit climate change to advance their preferred politics. (The same applies to 'research' in general.) If they did stop, the Right might develop a less negative attitude to the topic.