Economic & Corporate

The many branches of the Fugger family amassed their fortunes by trading in a diversity of products: textiles, spices, jewels, and even religious relics such as martyrs' bones and fragments of crosses. By expanding his capital in the late 15th century, Jakob 'the Rich' became the banker for increasingly affluent individuals.However, it was the family’s involvement in mining that significantly expanded their wealth and influence, as rulers offered them mining rights in Hungary and Tyrol as a form of debt repayment. In Schwaz, Tyrol, Archduke Sigismund of Austria offered Jakob 'the mother of all silver mines' as a repayment for a loan which had funded his lavish lifestyle. Due to the Fuggers’ industrial activities, people flocked to Schwaz stimulating urban development, making it the largest mining metropolis in the world in the first half of the 16th crentury.https://fuggerstrasse.eu/en/history.html The population boomed, which meant that the parish church in Schwaz had to be enlarged. A brick wall in the central aisle was built to separate miners from wealthier individuals.

The Fuggerei In Augsburg, the Fugger family's hometown, Jakob established one of his most renowned philanthropic endeavours: the Fuggerei. Founded in 1521, the Fuggerei provided affordable housing for the city's poorest citizens at a cost of one florin (equivalent to 0.88 euros) per year, along with the obligation to offer three prayers for Jakob.  https://www.europeana.eu/en/stories/meet-the-fuggers-jakob-the-rich-and-his-familyExplore a gallery about the Fuggers

The great carbon divide. We are not equally to blame for rising temperatures, and recognising that is an important step in identifying possible solutions.....the Oil Barons. Guardian Jonathan Watts  Mon 20 Nov 2023  The climate chasm between the world’s carbon-guzzling rich and the heat-vulnerable poor forms a symbolic shape when plotted on a graph. Climate-heating greenhouse gas emissions are so heavily concentrated among a rich minority that the image resembles one of those old-fashioned broad-bowled, saucer-shaped glasses beloved of the gilded age: a champagne coupe. At the top is the wide, flat, very shallow bowl of the richest 10% of humanity, whose carbon appetite – through personal consumption, investment portfolios, and share of government subsidies and infrastructure benefits – accounts for about 50% of all emissions. Just below is the epicure, that narrowing joint of the glass where the dregs collect. This is made up of the middle 40%, whose carbon habit is roughly proportionate to its number but still double the average carbon budget that everyone would need to stick to if the world is to have any chance of avoiding more dangerous levels of climate breakdown. Going further down is the long, slim, fragile stem comprising the remaining 50% of the world’s population, whose carbon use tapers away along with incomes. At the bottom are the hundreds of millions who live in extreme poverty and barely register in terms of greenhouse gases. The champagne coupe is a fitting image for the great carbon divide that we are living through. 

The last time wealth inequality was as pronounced as it is now was during that belle époque of the 1920s. Then, it was bad enough as a cause of social misery and international instability. Today, it is arguably much worse because the gulf between the haves and have-nots extends to their carbon emissions, which heightens suffering from the climate crisis and impedes efforts to find a solution. This year, the extremes have been more apparent than ever. Oil firms have raked in trillions of dollars in profits that they plan to use to expand production of climate-destabilising fossil fuels despite warnings from the International Energy Agency that this will make it impossible to keep global heating to within 1.5C. Meanwhile, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year on record, and the victims of global heating and extreme weather have been legion. From the dozens of poor Central American migrants who died from heatstroke trying to cross the desert into the wealthy US, to the 18 north Africans, including two children, who burned to death as they attempted to pass through Greek forests engulfed by flames; from the thousands of Hebei villagers who lost their homes when the Chinese government diverted flood waters from wealthy Beijing, to the Mexican fishing community of El Bosque that is being eroded due to more frequent storms battering its coastline. Speaking from an emergency refuge, Guadalupe Cobos Pacheco, a resident of El Bosque, said she felt resentment towards the oil companies that operated platforms within sight of her disappearing village. “We are living in a total climate breakdown. It is a constant worry … we don’t know what to do,” she said. “All this oil exploitation has consequences yet it is we who are paying.” These are just a few of the many individual stories of climate breakdown. Together, they have the potential to fundamentally destabilise life for all of us. Climate justice is expected to be high on the agenda of the UN Cop28 climate summit in Dubai starting later this month. In principle, rich nations have agreed on a “loss and damage fund” to help poor countries cope with the ever more severe fallout from the crisis. But this is not the only form of inequality. Income gaps – and therefore carbon gaps – may have narrowed between countries but they have widened within them. Responsibility for the ongoing climate crisis is becoming more concentrated, while its impacts are spreading.

Corporate Climate Action: Analyzing the Recent Surge of Climate Commitments. RMI analyzes what this increase in corporate commitment means and introduces a new tool to measure impact. RMI James Newcomb,  Adefunke Sonaike,  Daan Walter,  Laurens Speelman  November 29, 2023 On the eve of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), the media buzz about corporate climate action is decidedly mixed. Optimism about the growing numbers of companies setting climate goals is tempered by disappointing news about the pace of many companies’ actions to achieve their goals. We are still creating new structures and systems to guide corporate climate action and working through challenges as these systems mature. Beneath the surface, however, there are encouraging signals. Strong systemic forces are inexorably driving more companies to report greenhouse gas emissions, set independently verified climate action targets, and implement strategies to achieve these goals. RMI is creating new tools and methods, still under development, to better analyze the potential implications of corporate climate action.