A billionaire emits more carbon emissions in three hours than the average British citizen does in a lifetime – this is the finding of an Oxfam study on the emissions of the world’s 50 richest billionaires.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List, there are 165 billionaires in the UK and Forbes reports 2,781 billionaires in the world. It is hard to appreciate the spending power of a billionaire. If you spent a thousand pounds a day, a millionaire would run out of money in three years, a billionaire could keep spending for 3,000 years! The richest family in the UK, the Hindujas with a fortune of £37 billion, could carry on spending for 111,000 years!

The world’s richest people are using a disproportionate amount of the world’s remaining carbon budget – how much CO2 humanity can emit without causing global temperatures to rise above 1.5°C. If everyone began emitting as much as the wealthiest 1%, the remaining carbon budget would be gone in five months. If we started emitting as much as the average billionaire in Oxfam’s study, it would be gone in two days!

Emissions increase the further up the income scale you move due to higher consumption emissions, in particular luxury travel. Oxfam found that the world’s 50 richest billionaires took an average of 184 flights on private jets in a single year, producing as much carbon as the average person would in 300 years. Their luxury yachts have even higher emissions, equivalent to 860 years of average emissions. The UK is home to a fleet of 450 superyachts.

The Government announced a 50% increase in Air Passenger Duty for private jets in the recent budget. Fairer taxes on polluting private jets and superyachts would help to curb the emissions of the richest individuals and give the world more time to reduce emissions to avoid the most dangerous climate change.

However, even travel emissions from private jets and superyachts are dwarfed by the investment emissions of the world’s richest billionaires. Most of us derive our incomes from work supplemented with smaller amounts from investments, mostly our pension, but the richest derive most of their income and wealth from returns on their investments. Often, high polluting sectors, such as fossil fuels, give the best returns – only one billionaire in the study sample had investments in a renewable energy company.

The investments we make in the industries and economy of the future will determine whether we succeed in reducing our emissions in line with the world’s carbon budget. Billionaires hold extensive stakes in the largest and most powerful corporations, giving them the power to influence the way these companies act.

Only the democratic process of governments can temper the tendency of billionaires to use their immense spending power to determine the direction of our economy, aided by billionaire ownership of social media and the press. Keeping money out of politics with tight controls on lobbying and political donations is the only way to ensure that our future wellbeing is put ahead of delivering ever higher returns to the wealthiest individuals.