Introduction

Insights into the issues surrounding the Climate Change crisis, including Anthropocentrism, Capitalism and answering the question on How Billionaires Work to Destroy Our World. The article highlights various types of injustices faced by modern societies that are pertinent to the Climate Change and lays the ground for the importance of considerations for intergenerational justice.

Planetary Crisis - Climate Change Studies on the Rise

We all feel firsthand that the global temperatures are rising. Summers get hotter, winters get milder, and more and more weather anomalies occur, such as heatwaves, cyclones, droughts, tornadoes, etc. Just in Padova alone in 2025, we observed a lot of weather anomalies, including several hailstorms during the summer. It is only natural that now we attempt to understand how we could adapt to those changes and what we are to do to preserve our habitat - planet Earth. Over the past century, more and more studies related to climate change have emerged. By March 2026, there are over 10,5 millions of scientific publications that contain the phrase “climate change”. Scholars from various scientific fields attempt to answer the questions we all have on our minds - what will the temperature change mean for us? Is there anything we could do about it? What are the drivers behind climate change, and what is the human role in all of that? 

By conducting scientific research and disseminating those results among the general public, we also start to acknowledge that the climate of our planet is changing, resources are becoming more scarce, and we become more and more confident that human activity has been the main driver of this change (IPCC 2023, 4). And since humans have such a prominent role in shaping the future of the planet, before all else, we first need to talk about how it affects our co-inhabitants - the other species.

Humans 1 - Other Species 0

When we talk about Earth, it’s important to stress that we are only one of the multiple species that inhabit this planet. In fact, in 2011, Mora et al. conducted a study and their estimations predict that there are around “8.7 million (61.3 million SE) eukaryotic species globally, of which 2.2 million (60.18 million SE) are marine”, and their findings suggest that approximately “86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description”. (Mora et al. 2011, 1-2) By this day, we barely know the life on our own planet, yet each of these species is an essential part of our own ecosystem and environment. 
Therefore, if we are all inhabiting this planet and all species are, in one way or another, important for the ecosystems and play any role in maintaining natural systems as they are, it only makes sense that all the resources that we could find on the planet “belong” to us all equally, or rather don’t belong to anyone specific at all. It is important for us to acknowledge that we live in an interdependent world, where humans cannot survive by themselves.

With all that in mind, the reality is that the split of those resources among the species is far from being fair. It starts from the position human has taken on this planet, as we currently live in a so-called “Anthropocentric” or “Capitalocentric” world - the period when all Earth systems are shaped primarily by human forces and changes we cause to our environment. (Moore 2016) We live in a period where everything is perceived through its economic value, capital accumulation is of the highest priority, and nature is organised and treated in accordance with the principles defined by our economy-centric system of values. 

This leads us to question whether there is a consideration of interspecies justice, as humans ongoingly modify their environment according to our personal needs, often threatening other species’ extinction. Reflecting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Bossert (2024) argues that “framing Sustainable Development from an animal ethics perspective—which includes human interests—is in line with the normative foundations of Sustainable Development or even demanded if an interspecies approach to justice is accepted.” (Bossert 2024, 14) Which means that for for the sake of achieving the “peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future” (United Nations n.d), as envisioned by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we are to include nonhuman animals into our ethical considerations of justice as well. Yet, in 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services announced that “around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.” (IPBES 2019) 

With all that in mind, to discuss what the justice for our planet, for other species and future generations would look like, we would first need to address the subtleties of human destructive obsession with natural resources that intensified the planetary crisis in the first place. As, indeed, it seems to overshadow all the moral reasons and even basic survival instincts that should, on the contrary, lead us to wanting to preserve nature instead of destroying it, at least for our own species’ survival.

Natural Resources and Capital - Cornerstone of Modern Economics

So, if we come from the assumption that natural resources are the ones that belong to everyone inhabiting the planet or to no one at all, we have to discuss the matter of resource appropriation and accumulation that is inherent to humankind. The majority of the important natural resources that are kept underground, such as critical raw materials, are essential for economic development and innovation (for example of EU), and the fossil fuels (such as coal, gas and oil) are important sources of energy. As demonstrated in the interactive infographics by Ritchie and Rosado (2022), the countries of the world have increased their fossil fuel consumption since the 1800s, with China, the USA, India and Russia being the world’s top energy consumers of fossil fuels, and the USA and Australia having the highest annual fossil fuel consumption per person.

The fossil fuels, critical raw materials, water, wood, iron, soil, etc - it seems that everything that our planet could give we take, with very little restrictions on the volumes, and make it work for us. Everything gets a market value and is being turned into capital. Humankind ensures that their comfort is met, with very little ethical or moral consideration related to the consequences of such actions. 

Even if it’s not exactly true to say that every community on every continent have exactly the same capitalistic approach (while there are other worldviews, such as buen vivir, etc), the reality is evident. No matter how conscious and intentional each of us could be about our carbon footprint, our economies are driven by appropriation of resources, their extraction, production, and the rule of supply and demand. And our demand is often artificially manufactured with the help of advanced marketing techniques that ensure that we’re permanently unsatisfied and keep on wanting more. This vicious psychological cycle has even prompted Yale to develop an open-access course related to “Well-being”, which discusses in greater detail how the human brain’s flaws are being exploited by modern technologies and benefits the flow of capital, leaving us all permanently unhappy. So if this worldview and economic system make people unsatisfied, who does it benefit? Mainly, those people who accumulate their capital by satisfying this manufactured demand.

Who is the King of this Castle, or How Billionaires Prepare to Face the Climate Change Crisis?

Unsurprisingly, those who are already in the most advantageous positions will keep on striving no matter what is coming next. Not only have “people on the top” of the capitalist system found the way to navigate it to their benefit, appropriate all the crucial resources, but they are also currently looking for alternative ways to survive any apocalypses that their own actions and economic activity might cause. 

We currently observe a big “space race” between billionaires Bezos and Musk to “return humans to the moon”. (Reuters 2026) There is also a surge of questions among the ultra-rich on where they should go and how they should go around the human conditions to survive any “event”, alligned with futuristic aspirations of the world’s richest: Mars’ colonisation, development of the supercomputers to upload their minds to, reversing the aging processes - anything to be able to “transcend the human condition altogether”. (Rushkoff 2022) And it started to become more and more clear that the richest of us are not trying to look for ways to reverse negative changes on the planet, they are rather looking for ways to develop enough technologies to be fully independent (Baxter 2025), building underground bunkers (Kleinman 2025), and even moving continents for their own benefit, as some countries, such as New Zealand (Keats 2026), are embracing this influx of the wealthy. 

When identifying what is the role of the billionaires in the climate crisis that their actions fuel, Barros & Wilk (2023) conclude:

“According to our research, billionaires are directly responsible for the emission of thousands of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, far more than the average person, even in comparatively rich countries. Wealth and status have allowed the super-rich to avoid the consequences of climate change, while concealing many of their damaging practices. Even though some billionaires have taken pro-environmental personas in public, their lifestyles, and their competition to have the largest yachts and the most luxurious private aircraft, have turned them into what we call “carbon aristocrats.” They live at a level of comfort and convenience that exceeds even that of historical royalty and nobility. And their wealth gives them outsized clout in influencing governments’ economic and environmental policies. It is indisputable that everyone needs to make changes to their lifestyle if we want to avoid a climate catastrophe. But billionaires also need to be held accountable and reduce their personal carbon emissions.”

Knowing that the abundance of natural resources is needed for the other species’ survival, which also defines the survival of humanity as such, it is, without a doubt, shocking to learn that the majority of the world’s natural resources are, in one way or another, controlled by a select few who make executive decisions that have an impact on the lives of billions. This is an example of one of many socio-economic injustices human societies have. 

And when thinking of possible impacts of climate events on the populations worldwide, it also makes us wonder - how could already disadvantaged areas of the world, and those that will soon start to be exposed to the consequences of climate change (island nations, coastal communities, etc), be able to have a “fair” chance to survive? Especially when compared to the odds of the ultra-rich who have actively taken part in accelerating this crisis and have now ensured that they’ll survive no matter what will eventually happen, without any consideration for the fate of the planet. Studies show that the 1% of the worlds’ top emitters produce 1000 times more CO2 than the bottom 1% (IEA 2023), yet it is the lowest-income countries whose citizens will suffer the highest impacts of the climate change-induced crisis, in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Germanwatch 2025).

[1]Eukaryotes include humans, insects, worms, vertebrates, plants that produce via photosynthesis, some algae species, fungi,and even some protists, that include algae, slime molds, etc.
[2]On Feb 9 2026, Forbes have published an article, where they have summarised that even when we see the, seemingly impressive, pledges of donations for the charity causes by the ultra rich, the reality is that those sums are a smallest fraction of their real net worth. Their real income is beyond anything we usually can even comprehend. On the example of Jeff Bezos - he has contributed only 1.85% of his net worth for the “philantropic” causes, while Elon Musk have “given away” only 0.06% of his real capital, while being the richest person on Earth today. (Forbes 2026) The question is open - while facing the climate change crisis, what are the expectations we have on those who already benefit the most from the current system in place and what is their role to ensure just transition for the “less fortunate” ones?

Bibliografia

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