Homi Kharas is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. An economist by training, his forthcoming book,"The Rise of the Global Middle Class," will be published in November 2023.in its temperature records. The news came as the number of people living in middle-class or rich households around the world topped 4 billion. For the first time in history, an average citizen can now afford a middle-class lifestyle. Yet it would be a mistake to see these two events as mere coincidence.
Record temperatures are directly linked to climate change that is driven by a global economy built to satisfy the insatiable appetite of middle-class mass consumption. Despite all the hype over renewable energy, CO2 emissions reached a But this same middle class today also presents the best chance of reaching Net Zero by 2050 for three reasons.First, it’s clear that the only way to get climate change under control is if every country plays its part in reducing emissions. When the Kyoto Protocol, the first international climate agreement, came into effect in 2005, it only set binding emissions targets for a handful of advanced economies.
Without pressure from investors, markets would continue to finance dirty technologies in much greater sums. Fossil-fuel industries have used their power to extract huge subsidies from governments—according to the International Monetary Fund. And if governments won’t steer capital in the right direction by using carbon taxes and other economic instruments to get efficient market solutions, then capital markets will do it themselves. The U.S.
Third, the middle class is pushing companies to pay more attention to sustainability. A key feature of middle-class consumers is that they are voting with their pocketbooks, adding some social purpose to their economic choices. Some companies are explicit about using this as a business strategy. The apparel and accessories company Toms bills itself as “fashion for a good cause. We’re in business to improve lives.” The German company Share similarly donates profits for grassroots benefit.