While many of us are rinsing out our recyclables, fretting about climate breakdown and braving Irish roads by bike, the world’s growing number of billionaires have other challenges.
Elon Musk has reportedly negotiated a performance-related package with the shareholders of Tesla worth a trillion dollars (€864.9 billion). To bag it, he must sell 20 million Tesla cars, 10 million self-driving car subscriptions, one million humanoid robots and one million robotaxis. (For context, a trillion dollars has twelve zeros: 1,000,000,000,000.)
It is a sign of the times we are living in when such ambition is rewarded with an amount of money that no human being could spend in their lifetime. If Musk stopped earning right now and spent one million dollars a day, it would be more than one thousand years before he would need to look for a new job.
Admittedly, much of the wealth of ultra-rich individuals is paper-only, tied up in stock options whose value could tumble at any time.
READ MORE
More reason then, to project strength and power through conspicuous consumption in the form of private jets, custom-designed yachts, golden ballrooms and privately owned islands.
A recent report on carbon inequality by Oxfam claimed that the emissions of the world’s super-rich one per cent – mainly involving what it calls their “investment footprint”, or the polluting companies they invest in – are causing economic losses of trillions of dollars and contributing to crop losses. “Just four years (2015–2019) of the consumption emissions of the world’s super-rich one per cent are enough to cause 1.5 million excess deaths between 2020 and 2120. If everyone began emitting as much carbon as those in the top one per cent, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in fewer than five months,” the report states.
How charitable of some billionaires given their busy lifestyles to offer to downsize entire governments or “save” the world from climate change by donating money to carbon removal technologies and space travel. Meanwhile, the tech companies are establishing effective monopolies over technologies and platforms designed to make us forever hooked on AI or proprietary software to run everything.
[ Ireland’s 11 billionaires saw their wealth grow by a third to €50bn in 2024Opens in new window ]
The pursuit of wealth, in many cases, is not a purely personal goal: it is about building global power and influence, and using this power to shape and commodify every aspect of the human experience.
The vast wealth – and power – of today’s billionaires is more fitting for a nation state, but it is not being questioned or regulated, never mind adequately taxed.
Some billionaires donate generously to philanthropic causes. However, here again, their outsize influence over public debate can distort democratic process and undermine the work of governments rather than support it.
Bill Gates, for example, has argued just this week that short term greenhouse gas emissions reductions are not needed, and that the world would be better off tackling poverty first. He has set up a planet-sized straw man argument that is distracting and ultimately unhelpful as global leaders meet at Cop30 in Belém to address the long-standing issues of climate finance and mitigation.
In a world of growing inequality, the trillion dollar package for Musk screams climate injustice and blindness to the suffering and poverty experienced by billions. There are about 15 countries, including all sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, who combined have a GDP of $1.5 trillion.
Based on his current wealth alone, Musk could easily pay the recurring interest on the debt of the world’s poorest countries. If some of the other 2,700 billionaires in the world (according to a Forbes report) chipped in to the global climate finance fund, or the latest initiative to protect tropical forests (Tropical Forest Forever Facility) that might actually make a meaningful difference. After all, climate adaptation and mitigation needs money.
There are some rare examples in history of where vast wealth was simply given away. The industrialist Andrew Carnegie sold his steel production company in 1901 and dedicated the last part of his life to philanthropy based on his “Gospel of Wealth,” which posited that the rich had a moral obligation to distribute their wealth to improve society. He gave away nearly 90 per cent of his fortune, establishing 2,500 public libraries worldwide, and dramatically expanded access to education and literature for the working classes.
[ Want to understand what money does to your brain? Look at this photoOpens in new window ]
The island of Ireland is dotted with community and educational projects that were supported by Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies, which disbursed over €1.3 billion until it shut its doors in 2020.
Feeney wanted to die broke. He stated, “I see little reason to delay giving when so much good can be achieved through supporting worthwhile causes today.” So if we can’t – or won’t – tax the ultra-rich, we should at least promote the words of Feeney. Or even singer Billie Eilish, who has said she is donating proceeds from her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour to climate justice and food equity projects.
In a direct call to Mark Zuckerberg and the world’s billionaires she said, “there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties”.
Sadhbh O’Neill, who stood as a candidate for the Labour Party in 2024, is an independent climate and environmental researcher
