It's important to put into context, and to maybe do more analysis into 0.1% and 0.01% and so on, because many of us, while being "one percenters" are neither really rich nor really pollute a lot.
Yeah something like %pollution accumulated vs %rich would be interesting.
However being in 1% and not considered rich signifies total fiasco of western model. Basically you're relegating 99% into the poor category. American dream in action
Not really, it just means that you cannot have global rules for local differences. Car-free zones are possible in tight european cities with great public transport, but unusable in eg. rural US.
Same is true for "being (globally) rich", grouping all those people together and treating them as a single group.
Reading this: https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran... says that average rent is ~3.4k in san francisco, which means that living alone is pretty hard if not impossible after other expenses. On the other hand, in many countries, 5k per month makes you very rich.
So, Top 1% is meaningless if you can barely afford rent in a location where you live, since you're far from rich, and your CO2 usage is pretty much the same as someone with 1k after tax in a poor country (car, heat, lights, fridge, etc.). 5k in a poor country can build you a huge villa, where just the heat produces a lot more CO2.
But people like to think of them selves as 99-percenters, and that 1-percenters won't have rent problems.
