Regulating the Polluter Elite: Exploring policy measures limiting carbon footprints of the rich

Our society is caught up in a double crisis.

While levels and structures of social inequality have reached scales that experts comparable to the 19th century, the climate and environmental crisis jeopardizes the very survival of human civilization.

The richest income groups, which the IPCC has come to refer to as the ‘polluter elite’, make a disproportionate contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions as income/asset ownership and emissions are closely related.

This research project aims to explore policy suggestions to regulate the incomes, wealth and excessive consumption of the rich. It is structured into four work packages (WPs).

WP1: Literature review and an expert workshop on policies to regulate the wealthy; WP2: Qualitative interview study; WP3: Representative survey on policies regulating the incomes of the wealthy; WP4: Policy forums.

Taking a theoretical ‘sustainable welfare’ perspective as a point of departure, we apply a mixed-method design combining qualitative semi-structured interviews with survey experiments using vignettes.

Cooperating with stakeholders from the public sector, civil society and an International Scientific Advisory Board consisting of a selection of the world’s leading experts in the field, this research project will contribute to the design of broadly supported policies regulating the rich that are a necessary precondition for Sweden to meet its climate policy goals and to address inequalities.