Super-rich and the climate crisis: One year of CO₂ emissions per flight

Oxfam is warning about the consequences of excessive wealth ahead of this year's UN climate conference in Antalya, Turkey. The richest per thousand of the world's population causes more climate-damaging emissions than the poorest 44 percent, writes the development aid organization in a study published on Tuesday. Private jets and investment decisions in particular are responsible for global warming.

"The climate crisis is a question of social inequality. Only very few people use private jets or have billions in assets," says Oxfam speaker Manuel Schmitt. Last year, a global average flight in a private jet caused 3.7 tons of CO2, almost as many climate-damaging emissions as a person did in the entire year.

Germany's super-rich are also particularly heating up the climate compared to the rest of the Federal Republic. According to the Oxfam report, the more than 55,000 private jets that took off from local airports in 2025 emitted over 182,000 tons of CO2. In less than half an hour, they caused more CO2 than an average citizen in Germany did in the entire year.

The extremely rich are also exacerbating the climate crisis with their investments, as the Oxfam analysis of the investment behavior of 1,000 billionaires shows. The resulting emissions amounted to 486 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. As a result, on average, a billionaire causes more CO2 through investments in just over a minute than a person from the poorer half of humanity does in the entire year. For the 49 German billionaires examined, the climate-damaging effects of their investments were even significantly greater than the global average.

“Anyone who fuels the climate crisis so much must also pay to deal with it instead of passing the costs on to the general public,” says Oxfam speaker Schmitt. He demands: High wealth, private jets and excess profits, especially from fossil fuel companies, should be taxed more heavily, “so that those who contribute a particularly large amount to the climate crisis also make a particularly large contribution to overcoming it.”