‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival. The new report by the World Inequality Lab (WIL) aims to be the most comprehensive attempt yet to navigate the polycrisis that is pushing the world toward climate breakdown, political extremism and ever greater economic and social tension. View image in fullscreen A drone view shows the stark inequality between neighbourhoods in Santa Fe, Mexico City Photograph: Raquel Cunha/Reuters It offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors like industry and mining to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the report says 89% of the world population would see their incomes double by 2100 and global heating would be kept below 2C above the preindustrial average. The authors say their vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality. “There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, co-director of the WIL and professor at the Paris School of Economics. View image in fullscreen Economics professor Thomas Piketty says Trump-style policies will end in disaster. Photograph: Ed Alcock “The ideology, which we see with Trump and all the little Trumps that we have all across Europe and all across the world is simply not going to deliver. At the end of the day we’ll have to come to this kind of cooperative redistribution of resources and power because the alternative will simply lead to disastrous outcomes both on the environment, on the climate, but also on social grounds. The Global Justice Report, published on Thursday, tries to overcome the shortcomings of mainstream approaches to the polycrisis, including the overly materialistic emphasis of traditional leftist parties, the questionable efficacy of the economic degrowth proposed by many ecologists and the lack of social impact studies by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report aims to rectify those limitations by incorporating inequality studies, climate science and proposals for creating a political coalition capable of reforming the world’s financial architecture. View image in fullscreen A wildfire in California. The report addresses the climate crisis as well as social justice. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images This “plan for equality and prosperity within planetary boundaries” is the product of 45 authors based on databases compiled by more than 200 researchers from the world. At its core is the concept of sufficiency – the idea that people can enjoy a prosperous, healthy life without constantly striving to consume or accumulate more material possessions that degrade the natural world on which all life depends. To achieve this, the authors envisage three steps: more than halving average working time from 2,100 hours a year to 1,000 hours, roughly equivalent to a two-and-a-half-day working week; encouraging people to eat less red meat, which is the main driver of deforestation and ecological destruction; and refocusing the economy toward low-consumption activities by more than doubling education spending to €8,400 euros (£7,250) a person and healthcare spending to 14,400 euros. Piketty said: “One extra euro of GDP in education and health has three to four times less material footprint and energy consumption than one extra euro of GDP in the manufacturing sector. So that’s why the sectoral shifts are hugely important.” Tackling inequality is a central goal. The plan sees an average per capita gross national income across the world of €5,000 a month by the end of the century – an increase for almost everyone and with the greatest gains to be seen in the global south. The exception is the megarich, who would be highly taxed because they are most responsible for the climate crisis. The share of global wealth held by billionaires, who make up only 0.001% of the world population, would fall from 6% to 0.05%, while the bottom 50% would see their share of wealth increase from 2% to 30%. The other priority is reducing climate risks by cutting emissions as close to zero as possible. The report takes three mid-century scenarios for decarbonisation outlined by the International Energy Agency and projects them to 2100. Under its most ambitious plan, capital is redirected from the world’s wealthiest individuals and invested in wind, solar and other renewable technologies to accelerate the complete decarbonisation and electrification of energy supplies by 2050. Further emissions savings would come from a reduction in working hours and the shift in diets and economic activity. This is projected to keep global temperature rises to 1.8C by the end of the century – considerably lower than the catastrophic 4C to 4.5C estimates under scenarios of slow decarbonisation and ever-increasing demand for material goods. It is also better than the 1.9C projected under a scenario of across-the-board economic degrowth. Key among the practical steps needed to achieve the report’s goals would be the creation of a global justice fund to finance the energy transition and oversee an increase in education and healthcare spending to 38% of world GDP, up from 13% today. This work would be supported by a world sovereign fund, which would rebalance global holdings of public and private wealth closer to proportions last seen in 1970. “A habitable, equal 21st century is materially possible,” the report concludes. “What stands in the way is not technical impossibility but political choice and the hard but crucial work of building a coalition behind it.” Cornelia Mohren, a co-author and environmental coordinator at the WIL, acknowledged the report was “visionary and maybe utopian” but said this was necessary to show other paths were possible. “It is good to know we can combine an equal world with staying within carbon budgets,” she said. “That is a very helpful result. It makes me feel hopeful. We saw what’s possible and we also see how hard it is with this political reality, which can be depressing.” Piketty said recent history showed the goals of the report were plausible. Countries such as Sweden and Norway were once extremely divided economically but have made rapid progress in reducing inequality thanks to government policies and a refocusing of investment toward education and health, while working hours in Europe have halved since the 19th century, which is in line with the goal envisaged in the report. The key, Piketty added, was to address inequality and planetary habitability together. Without that twin approach, he said governments would risk repeating the mistakes that caused the Yellow Vest protests in France against a carbon tax that would have hit working and middle-class people more than the rich. “If you don’t put this at the centre of your analysis and if you talk about green policies, environment, in the abstract, this is simply not going to work,” he added. The report will be unveiled and discussed at the World Inequality Conference from 4-6 June in Paris, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, Jayati Ghosh, Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Lea Ypi and Gabriel Zucman. Jason Hickel, a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a visiting senior fellow at LSE, said: “It’s an important and timely intervention. All of this is technically feasible to achieve – we can have good lives for all within planetary boundaries – but it will require organised political struggle to make it happen.”