Francisco Valverde opens the Excel document and looks for the data: “In nine months, with the electric car I have avoided the emission of almost 380 kilograms of CO₂.”

He says it proudly and is convinced that the future will be completely plug-in.

“I have traveled almost 8,000 kilometers since we bought it and I have paid about 47 euros for the recharge, about 0.61 cents per kilometer.”

The energy he uses is produced through solar panels installed on the roof of his home in Madrid.

“I also bought a battery.

"I thought I was going to die without seeing and having these things at home," says this energy market consultant, at the forefront of the adoption of green technologies, which will be tomorrow in the new economy and will require adjustments in our lifestyle with considerable investments to abandon fossil fuels in favor of more environmentally friendly energy sources.

Because achieving climate goals will involve costs and belt-tightening for many families, threatening to widen the inequalities that already exist.

It is not only about the adoption of an electric car - whose current market value is higher than that of gasoline or diesel between 30% and 40%, according to the Spanish employers' association - but also about a change in food consumption , clothing, home rehabilitation, the way of traveling and other types of products and services.

“Part of the renewable expansion, such as the electrification of transport, must be carried out in homes and there may be difficulties in the adoption of these technologies in those with low economic capacity due to their limited access to capital and also due to problems of lack of information. ”, comments Xavier Labandeira, professor of Economics at the University of Vigo.

This is a 180 degree turn in our lifestyle, since the transformation is leading to the reconfiguration of employment, the relocation of industries and sectors, as well as the implementation of environmental taxes and regressive instruments that affect the highest income taxpayers. low.

The green revolution – as urgent as it is necessary due to the adverse effects that global warming is causing – highlights existing gaps and produces some new ones.

“The reality is that all changes in the production model tend to generate, at least in the short term, inequalities,” highlights Luis Ayala, professor of Economics at the National University of Distance Education (UNED).

And along this path, a discriminatory effect can be seen, which adds to other crises that have widened the gaps, such as the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the covid-19 crisis and the inflation caused by the geopolitical problems that have led to to the increase in fuel prices and that in effect dominoes have disrupted the entire economy.

“We are facing a new constellation of cumulative inequalities,” says Béla Galgóczi, researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI).

Perverse effects

The result of not making a fair transition, according to the experts consulted, can lead to a scenario of greater social tension, since in the absence of adequate incentives, efficient and sufficient aid, as well as progressive measures (that compensate those households with lower incomes ), the fight against climate change is seen as a restriction on certain freedoms or the addition of privileges for a few.

“Political reforms that do not adequately take into account the degree of inequality in a country will hardly receive public support and are likely to fail because they generate distrust and appear unfair,” warns Lucas Chancel, professor at Sciences Po and co-director of the World Inequality Lab of the Ecole d'économie de Paris.

Citizen unrest gives rise to greater protests, greater support for populist parties and growing disaffection and disinterest in efforts to stop climate change.

Social movements in rich and emerging countries—including the demonstrations against fuel and transportation price increases in Ecuador and Chile in 2019, and the yellow vests in France in 2018—are examples of this.

“A growing geography of discontent has emerged in Europe,” says Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Princess of Asturias Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Citizens, especially those in more vulnerable areas, feel increasingly disenfranchised and disconnected from governance.

“They are people who live in areas that are economically stagnant, and have the certainty or perception that any type of transition, in this case the ecological one, but also the digital one, are political measures that benefit an elite,” he highlights. .

The yellow vests have been an example, but not the only one.

In recent years, the European agricultural sector has mainly led the protests.

The most recent has occurred in Germany, where farmers denounce the elimination of diesel subsidies.

But demonstrations of fatigue have also occurred in Belgium, Portugal, France and Spain, where greater government support is demanded in the face of increasing fuel costs, greater action due to the effects of climate change (such as droughts, frosts or floods) and more and better aid for the introduction of green policies, included in the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Added to this is growing resistance to the installation of onshore photovoltaic and wind farms, which has highlighted the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon.

For example, in Norway — whose economy has been built on the extraction of fossil fuels — the fight to save local natural areas has gained popularity.

On the other hand, some political parties have taken advantage of the discomfort caused by the sum of inequalities to fuel their populist ideas, such as the defense of the Eurosceptic vote - which caused the United Kingdom to leave the European Union - or the aggrandizement of nationalisms, such as in the case of Donald Trump, former president of the United States and global warming denier.

In Spain, for their part, Vox leaders—who on several occasions have described the reports of the IPCC, the panel of experts on global warming, as “the biggest climate panic alert”—have tried to take advantage of agrarian discontent. that has occurred in the last year in the face of skyrocketing energy prices.

Today, Rodríguez-Pose explains, far-right parties in Europe have seen an opportunity and are already capitalizing on the anger by promoting policies against the ecological transition.

“Marie Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National party ran for the [French] presidency on a platform proposing a moratorium on wind energy and the installation of new turbines.

Giorgia Meloni, from Fratelli d'Italia, emerged victorious from the [Italian] legislative elections of September 2022 promising to diversify energy sources, build regasification plants, promote fracking

and

invest in nuclear energy,” highlights this expert in a recent report entitled The green transition and its potential territorial discontent.

The document indicates that, although the EU is leading the global path in this transition, through measures such as the European Green Deal, the benefits of the new model are distributed territorially unequally.

Some areas of central and eastern Europe, southern Italy and the Iberian Peninsula emerge as much more vulnerable to the green transition.

“These are regions with considerable dependence on sectors that will be disrupted by the implementation of climate change mitigation policies, such as tourism or heavy industry, including mining and brown energy production,” he highlights.

In Spain, some three million people, mainly dedicated to activities such as construction, agriculture, automotive and energy, could be directly affected by the transition, says economist and consultant José Moisés Martín.

“It does not mean that they are going to lose their jobs, but that they will require new skills to adapt to the context,” he highlights.

“The transition is going to mean a requalification,” corroborates Laura Martín Murillo, director of the Institute for Just Transition (ITJ).

The head of the institution, created in 2020, indicates that the Government is already helping the development of alternative activities in areas affected by the closure of coal mines, thermal and nuclear plants.

So far they have detected about 5,000 jobs that will require a transformation.

“An important part of the impacts is concentrated in Teruel, León, Palencia and Asturias,” she asserts.

Gentrification

Faced with this reality, metropolitan areas and capitals are those that tend to be, in general, less fragile and more adaptable to the changes driven by the transition.

“Dublin, Bratislava, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Bucharest, Prague, among others, seem substantially less vulnerable,” adds the report prepared by Rodríguez-Pose.

But they also do not have an elixir against inequality.

In some of them what is brewing is what Isabelle Anguelovski, a research professor at the ICREA foundation who works at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (Autonomous University of Barcelona), calls green gentrification.

This phenomenon consists of environmental and urban improvements (green zones) that end up expelling lower-middle or lower class residents from their neighborhoods, who are replaced by people with higher incomes, attracted by the creation of new parks, as well as by the availability of more attractive homes.

Anguelovski, together with her team, examined the real estate market and sociodemographic characteristics of 28 cities in nine countries in Europe and North America, and found that in 17 of them the green space planning strategy has triggered gentrification processes.

In Barcelona, ​​one of the cities included in the study, the most recent green gentrification has taken place in Sant Martí, a post-industrial area partially renamed the technology and innovation-oriented 22@ district.

Greening and gentrification also occurred in the 2010s in the regenerated old town (Ciutat Vella) and intensified further in the high-income district of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi.

“Green contributes and accelerates the production of long and large real estate complexes.

This attraction is very unequal because in the end it is, let's say, high-level real estate groups that set up shop and prices in general tend to rise very quickly,” highlights the expert.

“A brutal speculation is being created among vulture funds, among investment funds that buy entire buildings and sell them at luxury prices next to green spaces,” she adds.

The best way to avoid this phenomenon, says the specialist, is with more social apartments.

“The cities best prepared to avoid green gentrification are those with more public housing,” Anguelovski highlights.

Among them, Copenhagen or Berlin, with public housing around 20% of the park, or Vienna, with a figure that ranges between 35% and 40%.

“Here, in Spain, there is only 2%, and of course, real estate speculation drives you out of the neighborhood,” she points out.

It is also in large cities where greater availability is observed in the adoption of new technologies.

For example, in Spain, Madrid and Barcelona - which also have the highest average per capita income in the country - people are much more willing to buy a hybrid or electric car compared to other parts (78% compared to 69% in media), according to the Just Transition Observatory.

Likewise, in these places their inhabitants are more open to making changes in their diet to reduce meat consumption (66% compared to 58% of the national average) or pay more taxes related to the environment.

The counterpoint is in rural environments with less than 5,000 inhabitants, which are those who are less willing to adopt most of these behaviors, according to the survey carried out among more than 3,000 people from all over the country.

Observatory experts indicate that addressing ingrained behaviors entails significant challenges due to inertia and resistance to change.

Many of these are linked to various costs, not only of an economic nature, which implies the increase in the price of goods and services, but also of giving up certain comforts, which can even be perceived as a decrease in the level of well-being.

Environmental regulation, for the moment, does not force any family to adopt new technologies at home.

“It is still a voluntary process,” explains Diego Rodríguez, associate researcher at Fedea.

Especially because living sustainably is not yet viable for all budgets.

In terms of food, for example, buying a product with an ecological label (which originally respects the care of the environment and biodiversity) costs on average 54% more than conventional products from leading brands and sometimes its cost in the market is three times more than non-organic white label products, according to a 2022 OCU study. An eco basket (with 109 products) costs about 280 euros compared to its conventional counterpart which amounts to 140 euros, according to the Users Association Financial.

The differences range from organic oatmeal cookies with a cost of 5.47 euros compared to the 1.32 euros that conventional ones cost;

sliced ​​bread (3.99 euros versus 1.02 euros), to a smaller gap in olive oil (11.75 euros for organic, versus 8.99 euros for conventional) and beef steaks (18 .83 euros, compared to 14.79 euros).

“Organic food does not have to be for the privileged, but rather a democratic product, it should reach the entire population,” says Dolores Raigón, president of the Spanish Society of Organic Agriculture SEAE.

Regressive phenomenon

Currently, foods with an organic label reach almost all social classes, but the intensive profile of these products is at a middle, upper and upper middle class sociodemographic level.

The latter are the ones with the highest consumption per capita with an average intake of 16.5 kilos per person, compared to the 13.9 kilos of the national average, according to ministry data.

“Today, the increase in organic consumption occurs more in the younger age group, where the purchasing power is lower, therefore, we are seeing that it is a matter of priorities, not economic power,” Álvaro emphasizes. Barrera, president of Ecovalia, the Spanish professional association of organic production.

The challenge is how to combat climate change and inequalities, the two most pressing challenges of our times, at the same time and without leaving anyone behind.

What we cannot forget, says Isabel Blanco, economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is that the phenomenon of global warming is deeply regressive from an economic and social point of view.

“Because the higher the income, the higher the carbon emission, therefore, you are the one who contributes the most to that problem.

And the less income there is, the less capacity you have to adapt to the effects of climate change which, by the way, you have not caused,” she says.

And in this scenario, their thing would be to help lower-income households so that they do not fall behind.

“The energy transition cannot mean a decrease in anyone's standard of living,” adds Natalia Collado Van-Baumberghen, research economist at EsadeEcPol.

But how to do it?

The solution is to selectively resolve these problems, concentrating and reinforcing support and information measures in the segments that really need the capital to make the investment, says Labandeira.

In her opinion, subsidies intended to promote electric vehicles or the installation of renewable energy at home tend to lose effectiveness when applied widely.

“This disproportionately affects those who have the least resources and really need help.

And furthermore, those with more economic resources do not benefit as much from these programs, since they could make these investments even without the support.”

Added to this is that the user has to make an initial investment and then immerse themselves in a sea of ​​bureaucracy to obtain the subsidy, which in the case of the installation of photovoltaic panels can take up to two years from the start of the process, according to José Donoso. , general director of the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF).

In the case of purchasing electric cars, it can range from 12 to 30 months, depending on the Autonomous Community where it is requested, Anfac sources explain.

“What is necessary is to design an appropriate incentive plan, like Portugal, which surpasses us in electric vehicle registrations, with citizens with lower purchasing power and a lower intensity of aid, but who receive it at the time of purchase,” claims Arturo Pérez de Lucia, general director of the Business Association for the Development and Promotion of Electric Mobility.

On the other hand, some incentives are poorly designed and leave out income differences.

“At the end of the day, the climate mitigation policy, that is, the reduction of emissions, has to go through fiscal policy and consider the regressive effects due to income level,” argues Julián Cubero, leading economist of the Economics of Change cluster. BBVA Research Climate Report.

For example, the 20 cents per liter discount on gasoline at the time of the Ukrainian war crisis was applied equally to all levels of income consumption.

“And it was regressive, because it benefited the highest levels of consumption more,” adds the expert.

Beyond aid, the debate extends to environmental taxation, a pending task for Spain, according to different international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the European Commission.

These taxes seek to discourage the use of fossil fuels and impact those who have the least, so their application would have to be accompanied by a redistributive scheme to compensate the most vulnerable households, according to experts.

“It is essential to implement policies that alleviate the financial burden on families during the transition,” emphasizes Collado.

A viable option, he says, would be to establish money transfers as Canada has done with the Climate Action Incentive Payment.

This system consists of a tax-free compensation that the Government gives to its residents - depending on their personal situation (marital status, number of children) and the province in which they live (people in rural areas receive 10% more). —, to offset the cost of discouraging the use of fossil fuels according to the polluter pays maxim.

“I think we must use energy-environmental taxes that introduce incentives for change and also collect the responsibilities of polluters,” adds Labandeira.

“If used properly, these taxes will lead to higher payments by those who pollute the most,” she concludes.

Billionaire businessman Richard Branson, during a news conference after flying with a crew on Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity passenger rocket plane on July 11, 2021. JOE SKIPPER (REUTERS)

Rich, capricious and polluting

The planet's ultra-rich know no limits.

In 2021, as the world recovered from the pandemic, two billionaires, the British Richard Branson — whose empire began with Virgin Records, a record label that recorded the punk band Sex Pistols — and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, starred in a career for being the first tycoon to go, with his own ship, beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

Branson, who dreams of having a hotel on the Moon, was ahead of Bezos by nine days.

But both won the medal for being the largest emitters of polluting gases on the planet.

On a trip like Bezos's, lasting almost eleven minutes, about 75 tons of carbon have been emitted per passenger, that is, the same footprint that a low-income person leaves in their entire life, according to a report by the World Inequality Lab ( WIL).

Houston, we have a problem: the ultra-rich are contributing more to the destruction of the planet.

The wealthiest 0.01% (about 770,000 million people) produce, on average, 2,531 tons of CO₂ per year, compared to 1.6 tons for the poorest 50% on the planet, according to WIL data.

These emissions come from both individual consumption and the investments they make.

There are variations, but the result is clear, say the institution's experts: “Extreme wealth leads to extreme pollution.”

“The ultra-rich fly a lot, often on private planes, or use large ships.

There are no sustainable fuels available for these forms of transport,” says Stefan Gössling of Linnaeus University in Sweden.

This select group of major polluters is followed by another: the 7.7 million people with an average annual income of 1.2 million dollars, who are only 0.1% of the world's population.

This group emits 10 times more than the richest 10% combined, according to the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Behind them is 1% of the population, which produces 16% of global carbon emissions.

“This elite emits as much as the poorest 66% [about 5 billion people],” comments Jacobo Ocharan, global lead at Oxfam Climate Initiative (OCI).

Airport located in El Camino Real, New Mexico (USA), built by architect Norman Foster for space tourism.

“Advanced economies have more people, as a proportion of their population, in this group, because they have higher per capita incomes,” explains Laura Cozzi, director of Technology and Sustainability Perspectives at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The richest 1% in Spain earn more than 378,000 euros per year or have assets greater than 2.5 million euros, according to WIL data.

“But we must not forget that there are more and more high-income individuals within countries that still have low emissions per capita on average, such as India or China,” she highlights.

private planes

For example, a tenth of all flights leaving France in 2019 were on private planes, Bloomberg indicates.

In just four hours, those planes generate as much carbon dioxide as the average person in the European Union emits all year, the agency says.

Considering, on the other hand, the space needs of airplane seats, passengers in premium classes consume three times more fuel than passengers in economy class, the IEA states in a report.

Until not long ago, the debate on the fight against climate change used to focus mainly on the differences in polluting gas emissions between rich and developing countries.

But after almost three decades of growing inequality, another element is now added to the debate: income distribution and its polluting impact.

And while the emissions of the world elite are important, so are those of 10% of the population (770 million people) and which includes the majority of the middle classes of developed nations (with an income of more than of 41,000 euros per year).

This group generates half of the total carbon emissions and is under the yoke of an economic system oriented towards continuous and unbridled consumption.

“The voice of this group is important in ensuring change,” say Oxfam experts.

Almost two-thirds live in advanced nations, but also in China, the Middle East, Russia and South Africa, where there is high income and wealth inequality.

If this 10% maintain their current emissions levels, they will exceed the total amount of gases allowed in the Net Zero Emissions Scenario for 2050, that is, they will far exceed the goal, according to information from the IEA.

In this context, a new debate arises: how to ensure that the middle classes can emerge in the global south without reproducing the unsustainable lifestyle of the north?

The transformation of the model will depend, to a large extent, on how much the people at the top of the pyramid contribute, experts agree.

Gössling suggests the implementation of progressive carbon tax systems, complemented by cash transfers targeted to certain categories of the population.

To achieve this, he highlights, it is necessary to have the possibility of carbon tax rates increasing proportionally to emission levels, through the combination of various fiscal instruments aimed at both consumers and investors involved in emissions-intensive activities. .

Lucas Chancel, a professor at Sciences Po and co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the École d'économie de Paris, says there should be clear limitations, such as the use of private jets and luxury villas.

“For emissions associated with people's ownership of companies, financial emissions, we need to quickly develop indicators that help people invest in the right financial products.

We can help this change with incentives: lower tax rates for green investments and higher tax rates for polluting investments, and strict regulations or prohibitions on new investments in sectors that do not meet certain environmental standards.

And furthermore, he adds that more public resources are necessary to ensure that the entire population can access the services they need.

“What people need is good public transportation, not necessarily a car.”

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