A sweeping new report from the World Inequality Lab (WIL) outlines a vision for planetary survival that combines raising living standards, reducing inequality, and limiting global heating to below 2 degrees Celsius. The report, titled the Global Justice Report, aims to navigate the polycrisis of climate breakdown, political extremism, and economic tension.
The report proposes bold policy measures including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, dietary changes, and a shift in investment from material-intensive sectors like industry and mining to education and health. If implemented, the authors claim 89% of the world population would see their incomes double by 2100, while keeping global warming within safe limits.
Key Proposals
The report is built around the concept of sufficiency, which argues that people can enjoy prosperous lives without excessive consumption. To achieve this, the authors envision three steps:
- Reducing average working time from 2,100 hours per year to 1,000 hours, roughly a two-and-a-half-day work week.
- Encouraging reduced red meat consumption to curb deforestation and ecological destruction.
- Refocusing the economy toward low-consumption activities by more than doubling education spending to €8,400 per person and healthcare spending to €14,400 per person.
Thomas Piketty, co-director of the WIL and professor at the Paris School of Economics, emphasized that one extra euro of GDP in education and health has three to four times less material footprint than in manufacturing. He warned that Trump-style policies will lead to disaster, calling for cooperative redistribution of resources and power.
Tackling Inequality
Central to the plan is addressing inequality. The report projects an average per capita gross national income of €5,000 per month globally by 2100, with the greatest gains in the global south. The megarich would face high taxes, reducing their share of global wealth from 6% to 0.05%, while the bottom 50% would see their share increase from 2% to 30%.
The report also aims to cut emissions to near zero by 2050 through redirecting capital from the wealthiest into wind, solar, and other renewables. Combined with reduced working hours and dietary shifts, this could keep global temperature rises to 1.8°C by 2100, compared to catastrophic 4-4.5°C under business-as-usual scenarios.
Practical Steps
To achieve these goals, the report proposes a global justice fund to finance the energy transition and increase education and healthcare spending to 38% of world GDP, up from 13% today. A world sovereign fund would rebalance public and private wealth holdings to levels last seen in 1970.
Co-author Cornelia Mohren acknowledged the report is visionary and perhaps utopian, but necessary to show alternative paths. Piketty noted that countries like Sweden and Norway have made rapid progress in reducing inequality through government policies, and working hours in Europe have halved since the 19th century, demonstrating feasibility.
The report will be unveiled at the World Inequality Conference in Paris from 4-6 June, with speakers including Ha-Joon Chang, Jean Drèze, and Jayati Ghosh. Jason Hickel of the Autonomous University of Barcelona called it an important and timely intervention, stressing that political struggle is needed to make it happen.
