- Jun 2024
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www.idos-research.de www.idos-research.de
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for - paper
paper - title: Carbon Consumption Patterns of Emerging Middle Class - year: 2020 - authors: Never et al.
summary - This is an important paper that shows the pathological and powerful impact of the consumer story to produce a continuous stream of consumers demanding a high carbon lifestyle - By defining success in terms of having more stuff and more luxurious stuff, it sets the class transition up for higher carbon consumption - The story is socially conditioned into every class, ensuring a constant stream of high carbon emitters. - It provides the motivation to - escape poverty into the lower middle class - escape the lower middle class into the middle class - escape the middle class into the middle-upper class - escape the middle-upper class into the upper class - With each transition, average carbon emissions rise - Unless we change this fundamental story that measures success by higher and higher levels of material consumption, along with their respectively higher carbon footprint, we will not be able to stay within planetary boundaries in any adequate measure - The famous Oxfam graphs that show that - 10% of the wealthiest citizens are responsible for 50% of all emissions - 1% of the wealthiest citizens are responsible for 16% of all emissions, equivalent to the bottom 66% of emissions - but it does not point out that the consumer story will continue to create this stratification distribution
from - search - google - research which classes aspire to a high carbon lifestyle? - https://www.google.com/search?q=research+which+classes+aspire+to+a+high+carbon+lifestyle%3F&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgGECMYJxjqAjIJCAAQIxgnGOoCMgkIARAjGCcY6gIyCQgCECMYJxjqAjIJCAMQIxgnGOoCMgkIBBAjGCcY6gIyCQgFECMYJxjqAjIJCAYQIxgnGOoCMgkIBxAjGCcY6gLSAQk4OTE5ajBqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - search results returned of salience - Carbon Consumption Patterns of Emerging Middle Classes- This discussion paper aims to help close this research gap by shedding light on the lifestyle choices of the emerging middle classes in three middle-income ... - https://www.idos-research.de/uploads/media/DP_13.2020.pdf
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- Jul 2023
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scheerpost.com scheerpost.com
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- for: inequality, 1%, elites, carbon inequality, leverage point, leverage point - climate change, oxfam
- quote
- Richest 1% Took 2/3rds of Global Wealth Since 2020
- Richest 1% increased wealth in 2020 and 2021 twice as much as 99% of Population Earned
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- Nov 2021
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www.annualreviews.org www.annualreviews.org
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A final cluster gathers lenses that explore phenomena that are arguably more elastic and with the potential to both indirectly maintain and explicitly reject and reshape existing norms. Many of the topics addressed here can be appropriately characterized as bottom-up, with strong and highly diverse cultural foundations. Although they are influenced by global and regional social norms, the expert framing of institutions, and the constraints of physical infrastructure (from housing to transport networks), they are also domains of experimentation, new norms, and cultural change. Building on this potential for either resisting or catalyzing change, the caricature chosen here is one of avian metaphor and myth: the Ostrich and Phoenix cluster. Ostrich-like behavior—keeping heads comfortably hidden in the sand—is evident in different ways across the lenses of inequity (Section 5.1), high-carbon lifestyles (Section 5.2), and social imaginaries (Section 5.3), which make up this cluster. Yet, these lenses also point to the power of ideas, to how people can thrive beyond dominant norms, and to the possibility of rapid cultural change in societies—all forms of transformation reminiscent of the mythological phoenix born from the ashes of its predecessor. It is conceivable that this cluster could begin to redefine the boundaries of analysis that inform the Enabler cluster, which in turn has the potential to erode the legitimacy of the Davos cluster. The very early signs of such disruption are evident in some of the following sections and are subsequently elaborated upon in the latter part of the discussion.
The bottom-up nature of this cluster makes it the focus area for civil society movements, human inner transformation (HIT) approaches and cultural methodologies.
Changing the mindset or paradigm from which the system arises is the most powerful place to intervene in a system as Donella Meadows pointed out decades ago in her research on system leverage points: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
The sleeping giant of billions of potential change actors remains dormant. How do we awaken them and mobilize them. If we can do this, it can constitute the emergence of a third unidentified actor in system change.
The Stop Reset Go (SRG) initiative is focused on this thematic lens, bottom-up, rapid whole system change, with Deep Humanity (DH) as the open-source praxis to address the needed shift in worldview advocated by Meadows. One of the Deep Humanity programs is based on addressing the psychological deficits of the wealthy, and transforming them into heroes for the transition, by redirecting their WEALTH-to-WELLth.
There are a number of strategic demographics that can be targeted in methodical evidence-based ways. Each of these is a leverage point and can bring about social tipping points.
A number of 2021 reports characterize the outsized impact of the top 1% and top 10% of humanity. Unless their luxury, high ecological footprint behavior is reeled in, humanity won't stand a chance. Annotation of Oxfam report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Foxfamilibrary.openrepository.com%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F10546%2F621305%2Fbn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf&group=__world__ Annotation of Hot or Cool report: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotorcool.org%2Fhc-posts%2Frelease-governments-in-g20-countries-must-enable-1-5-aligned-lifestyles%2F&group=__world__
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