Environmental damages of the top ten percent consumers exceed global climate and biodiversity... (opens in new tab)

The top 10% of global consumers is disproportionately responsible for transgressing planetary boundaries, causing damages for which broader society bears the costs. Here we monetise the climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical cycles and freshwater-use footprints of these consumers using prices of the Environmental Prices Handbook. We find annual damages owed by the global 10% to be $1.7–$5.7 trillion, equivalent to $2.3k–$7.5k per person (in $2017). This surpasses international cl...