The Green New Deal doesn’t directly call for people to consume less meat. But the argument that solving climate change means changing our diets is widespread, and Ocasio-Cortez herself has made the link.

Yet Trump’s tweet was actually on the money in more ways than one. Environmental measures, and solutions to climate change, often appear (or are talked about) as programs of austerity. To reduce “our” impact “we” need to consume less: eat less meat, walk and not drive, fly less, buy less fast fashion, and so on.

From personal carbon footprint calculators to articles outlining how many Earths we need to sustain the consumption of the average citizen of the UK, Europe or the US, consumption is identified as the problem. Reduce consumption, runs the argument, and you solve climate change. But is “our” consumption really the problem? Who is “we” anyway?

Globally uneven consumption

This point has been made before, but bears repeating. Most of the world’s population produces very little in the way of either carbon emissions or broader environmental impacts. We can go further here by also looking at imported carbon emissions – that is, the emissions that come from the production of goods and services in countries such as China that are then consumed in the wealthy countries of the global north. If we include imported emissions, the UK’s overall emissions have only marginally decreased since 1990.

When we approach carbon emissions this way, it’s clear the problem isn’t overpopulation or China, but the richest people on earth. After all, being rich, especially ultra-rich, means being directly responsible, either through consumption or control, for the majority of the world’s carbon emissions. For instance, the charity Oxfam has found that the richest 10% of people produce half of the world’s carbon emissions, while the poorest half contribute just 10%.