Aathira Perinchery 
Within the first 10 days of 2025, the richest 1% in the world ate up their share of the annual global carbon budget, according to a recent report by international non-governmental organisation, Oxfam. A person from the poorest half of the world’s population would take 1,012 more days – almost three years – to do the same.
An annual carbon budget is essentially the amount of emissions one can produce every year while still maintaining global warming below 1.5° Celsius – the latter is one of the goals of the Paris Agreement that countries including India are signatory to. But to meet this 1.5°C goal, the richest 1% will need to cut their emissions by 97% by 2030 according to the recent Oxfam report.
The report calls on governments across the world to ensure that the richest reduce their emissions through means such as taxes on wealth and carbon-intensive luxury consumptions including private jets and super-yachts. For India, wealth taxes are essential for the government to be able to fund programmes to ensure basic public needs, economist Jayati Ghosh told The Wire. And with carbon emissions being a good proxy for ecological damage, India should also definitely be taxing or putting constraints on the activities that cause big carbon emissions, she added.
Carbon inequalities
Intense and unseasonal rains, unusual droughts, more frequent heat waves and wildfires: these are just some of the ways that climate change, through rising global temperatures, is making its presence felt across the globe. Key to tackling climate change is limiting greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere through human activities including burning of fossil fuels. The main goal of the Paris Agreement of 2015 – an international legally-binding treaty to tackle climate change, which 195 member parties including India have ratified – is to ensure that the increase in the global average temperature remains “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and ideally try to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
An annual carbon budget comes in handy here – it quantifies how much carbon emissions people can afford to emit through their activities every year, while ensuring that the temperature rise does not go above these limits.
But the ultra-rich around the world do not seem to care: they are devouring their carbon budgets at a terribly unsustainable rate through emissions released by their private jets, super yachts, and polluting investments. An Oxfam analysis published on January 10 revealed a shocking statistic that reaffirms how the ultra-rich are disproportionately driving climate change: the richest 1% in the world burned through their share of the annual global carbon budget in just the first 10 days of 2025. On the other hand, a person from the poorest half of the world’s population would take 1,022 days – almost three years – to consume their share of the annual global carbon budget, the report said.
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To meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal, the richest 1% will need to cut their emissions by 97% by 2030 according to the report.
“The future of our planet is hanging by a thread. The margin for action is razor-thin, yet the super-rich continue to squander humanity’s chances with their lavish lifestyles, polluting stock portfolios and pernicious political influence. This is theft – pure and simple – a tiny few robbing billions of people of their future to feed their insatiable greed,” said Oxfam International’s climate change policy lead, Nafkote Dabi, in a press release.
Another report by Oxfam in October last year, which tracked emissions from billionaires’ private jets, yachts and polluting investments, found that the top fifty billionaires emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average person does in a lifetime. It found that on average, 50 of the world’s richest billionaires took 184 flights in a single year, emitting as much carbon as the average person would in 300 years. During the same period, their yachts emitted as much carbon as the average person would in 860 years. The report also found that nearly 40% of billionaires’ investments are in highly polluting industries: oil, mining, shipping and cement.
“The super-rich are treating our planet like their personal playground, setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit. Their dirty investments and luxury toys – private jets and yachts – aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet,” Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar had said in a press release.
Billionaire boom
And the number of billionaires is increasing every year. According to Forbes, there were more billionaires in 2024 than ever before: 2,781 in total. These billionaires are also getting richer: put together, they were worth US $ 14.2 trillion in aggregate (up by US $ 2 trillion from 2023) in 2024. While most of these billionaires are in the Global North, India has the third highest number of billionaires in the world at 200, after the United States and China.
Three Indians feature among the top 50 in the Forbes World’s Billionaires List for 2024. Mukesh Ambani – who owns petrochemical, oil and gas businesses, among others – is the ninth richest person in the world; his net worth increased by US $ 116 billion in 2024. The 17th richest person is Gautam Adani, whose business interests also span several environment-damaging industries including mining; his net worth increased by US $ 84 billion in 2024. At spot 39 is Shiv Nadar, co-founder of tech giant HCL Technologies, while the Jindal Group under Savitri Jindal which deals in businesses including steel, power, cement and infrastructure is at spot 46 with an increase in net worth by US $ 33.5 billion.
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India’s Mumbai and Delhi have made it to the top 50 cities for centi-millionaires, according to the Centi-Millionaire Report 2024 by Henley and Partners. There are 236 centi-millionaires in Mumbai alone, more than in Dubai (212); and 123 in Delhi.
The 2024 Oxfam report makes grim predictions for the future due to the disproportionately high carbon emissions that global billionaires generate. The impacts of billionaires’ ultra-luxury lifestyles are extremely unequal, with low- and lower-middle-income countries – including India too – facing the brunt in terms of climate impacts. The report predicts that apart from economic losses for such lower and middle-income countries (and high income countries registering economic gains on the other hand), 78% of excess deaths due to heat through 2120 will occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
Among the recommendations that the Oxfam reports make are that governments “introduce permanent income and wealth taxes on the top 1%” and “ban or punitively tax carbon-intensive luxury consumptions” on the ultra-rich to reduce their carbon emissions.
Wealth taxes: What and why
By definition, wealth taxes are levies imposed on an individual’s net worth, as opposed to taxes such as those placed on incomes.
According to Oxfam, a wealth tax on the world’s millionaires and billionaires could raise at least US $ 1.7 trillion annually, money that could go into climate finance especially for countries in the Global South – funding climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in these nations that already are and will continue to face some of the worst impacts of climate change. Meanwhile, a wealth tax on investments in polluting activities globally could rake in another US $ 100 billion.
Because India has some extremely rich people – among the richest people in the world – the possibilities of even a very small tax on their wealth would generate a lot of income for the country, Jayati Ghosh, professor at the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, US, told The Wire. India has many billionaires and centi-millionaires in dollar terms. And though they are relatively few in number, their wealth is so large that taxing even a nominal part of that wealth would make a big difference to India’s GDP and government strategy, Ghosh said.
“The idea is not that you necessarily tax the wealth. You can tax it in other ways, you can tax the dividend income, rent, whatever. But the idea is that they should pay at least 2% of the value of their known wealth as tax,” she told The Wire.
This is important because the wealthy can actually avoid tax altogether, she added; they have several ways of getting around the taxes that salaried people pay, such as by putting their money into investments.
“The need for the wealth tax is essential in any case. We need the wealth tax…inequality is far too extreme, our government cannot fund basic public services, so we definitely need the wealth tax.”
With regards to climate change and the environment, it is true that the wealthy are responsible for around half of the carbon emissions which are a good proxy for ecological damage, said Ghosh.
Illustration: The Wire, with Canva.
“So we should definitely be taxing or putting constraints on the activities that cause big carbon emissions. “
Private jets, large swimming pools for each luxury flat in a water-stressed country such as India, and the multiple homes that the ultra-rich have in hill stations, seasides – all would qualify for such taxes, Ghosh said. There is also far too much investment in fossil fuels, but that’s partly also because fossil fuels benefit from a lot of government subsidies, she added. One way to tackle this is to reduce subsidies – not on final consumers, but on producers and investors.
“We [currently] subsidise investment and production of fossil fuels. We should be subsidising final users, like people who are using the fuels and road transport…For people who are heating or cooling their homes, we can subsidise that. But we should not be subsidising investment in fossil fuels. We should be subsidising green energy.”
However, can a wealth tax force the rich to take their businesses and investments abroad, causing a loss to the country’s economy? While it’s impossible to say that the ultra-rich can’t leave the country, it is possible to levy a tax on such an exit – countries like the US and France are already doing this, Ghosh explained. “You cannot just take all your money and leave. You have to pay a tax on that.”
Will India tax its ultra-rich?
Clearly, lifestyles matter when it comes to curbing climate change. Incidentally, prime minister Narendra Modi and subsequently many union ministers leading with union environment minister Bhupender Yadav have all called on citizens to limit their consumption levels as part of Mission LiFE. India has also submitted this initiative as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to tackle climate change under the Paris Agreement of 2015.
Mission LiFE describes itself as an “India-led global mass movement to nudge individual and community action to protect and preserve the environment”. “LiFE is a public movement to mobilize individuals to become ‘Pro-Planet People’,” the Mission LiFE website states. “If you want to change the world, start with yourself. Responsible individual climate action is the key to safeguarding our collective future.”
If the ultra-rich listen to LiFE’s appeal and limit their consumption levels they can really change the world – but will they? India, currently, has no system in place to prod its ultra-wealthy to do this. It does not have a wealth tax for the ultra-rich yet, nor does it penalise activities that emit high levels of carbon emissions. But surprisingly, India was among the countries that endorsed considering taxing the ultra-rich at the last G20 summit in Brazil, Ghosh points out in her recent commentary in The Indian Express.
“With full respect to tax sovereignty, we will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,” the G20 Resolution read. “Cooperation could involve exchanging best practices, encouraging debates around tax principles, and devising anti-avoidance mechanisms, including addressing potentially harmful tax practices.”
But will India really walk the talk on this? The upcoming union budget for 2025-26 the union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will deliver on February 1 is an opportunity. But Ghosh admits that she’s not very optimistic. According to Ghosh, the government of India went along with the G20 resolution because it would be very embarrassing for it if it didn’t.
“I would be very surprised if they actually followed through. I really hope, I think it would be wonderful if they followed through,” she said. But something like a wealth tax on the ultra-rich will really need public pressure, she commented.
“It will not happen without public pressure. This is not a government that is going to do anything like that without a lot of public pressure.”