The Rich Are to Blame for Climate Change - Don’t Let Them Fool Us!

Photo: Juan Marin on Unsplash. 

This article was originally published by InfoLibre on January 1, 2026 and was translated by John Collins. 

In the mass media, it’s common to find language affirming that the alarming rise in the Earth’s temperature is due to humans burning fossil fuels. These kinds of statements, which claim to offer a diagnosis grounded in common sense, point toward a generic culprit, “humans,” who first must be made aware and then mobilized to confront the very climate change for which they are allegedly responsible. 

Well, this kind of statement contains a great lie: it offers us a false and self-serving diagnosis that confuses more than it explains. Blaming humans in general is a convenient mantra that is trotted out continually in the media, on talk shows, and in the specialized press. We are all to blame, we all have to do our part - that’s the conclusion. 

While it’s clear that there is a pattern of consumption, productive practices, transport patterns, and land use that are widespread throughout the population, and that these have an obvious impact on ecosystems, responsibility for the issue, and for many others, is very unevenly distributed. 

This is made very clear in two recent reports generated by researchers from the World Inequality Lab, one addressing global inequality, and the other climate change. Both texts are essential reading for the topic I’m addressing here. 

One of the central arguments advanced in both reports is that inequality, both in income and especially in terms of wealth, is increasing rather than decreasing (and this is not a recent phenomenon), is currently reaching historic levels, has a structural dimension grounded in neoliberal capitalism, and is key to understanding and finding solutions to accelerated climate change. 

The figure below, taken from the first report, is illustrative in this regard. First, it shows that those groups with the highest income are those who pollute the most; and second, their contribution to the problem is even greater if, instead of consumption, we put the focus on property ownership, where responsibility of the top ten percent and the top one percent is even greater.  

Distribution of emissions by population groups.

This shows not only that the “developed countries” (to use the conventional term) pollute much more than the “less developed” ones, but also that those groups that hoard more capital (financial and real estate assets) and large corporations are mainly responsible for the uncontrolled growth in greenhouse gas emissions. 

These groups have no qualms about joining the empty and biased “we are all guilty” propaganda campaigns that dilute their responsibility; indeed, they promote them when they’re not openly aligning themselves with the climate change deniers, whose influence continues to grow. The important point is that burning fossil fuels remains a formidable business that enriches the companies involved, their executives, and their big shareholders. 

A protester holding a sign about the climate change denial of ExxonMobil at the protest Our Generation, Our Choice in Washington, D.C., 10 November 2015. (Photo: Johnny Silvercloud, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

In fact, despite warnings that we may already be at a tipping point and that the costs (borne, above all, by the poor of the North and the South) are already enormous, the business continues. Indeed, it continues to receive massive investments, with the support of large banks and investment funds, in the fossil fuel sector (oil, coal, natural gas), in the infrastructure that sustains it, and in the agricultural, industrial, and service activities that use this energy intensively. Such projects mortgage the coming years and decades. And, of course, we have to recognize here that the wave of militaristic fervor we are seeing all around us constitutes a strategic wager on the military-industrial complex and, by extension, a significant step in the commitment to fossil fuels. 

Well, let the party continue - until the ship sinks.