Green with envy? The effects of inequality and equity within and across social groups on greenhouse gas emissions, 1990–2020

The idea that inequality and inequities drive climate change forms a strong discourse in environmental politics. Reducing inequality is promoted as a win–win solution for reducing greenhouse gases. Others view egalitarian processes as a potential threat since increasing the consumption possibilities of the bottom-rungs of society relative to the top would drive up higher overall emissions. Using the latest available data on greenhouse gas emissions and the adoption of green energy technology measured over three decades, this study finds that a variety of measurements of vertical and horizontal inequality and inequitable access to political resources correlate with lower emissions per capita and greater adoption of green energy technologies. Inequality works in the opposite way than often thought. Per capita income levels, contrarily, are robustly and consistently associated with higher emissions, results that support the view that it is overall wealth (consumption) that drives climate change, not its distribution. Reducing inequality and poverty poses a moral and practical conundrum because levelling up incomes within and between countries, given current levels of technology, will worsen the climate crisis. The basic results hold up to a barrage of robustness tests, such as alternative estimating methods, models, and data, and to formal tests of omitted variables bias. Understanding how emissions might be reduced while addressing questions of equity demands calls for much harder thinking, and potentially fewer slogans, such as “eco-social contracts” and “new green deals” that peddle win–win solutions to a ‘wicked problem.’