‘Profiteering from pain’: Investments of super-rich fuel climate crisis and capitalise on recovery

A new UN report makes it clear we can’t depend on current national climate pledges to keep global temperature rise within safe limits.

The latest plans would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by just six per cent by 2035, compared with 2019 levels.

This is down from last year’s projection of a 10 per cent cut, largely due the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It remains far short of 60 per cent scientists say is needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, the threshold to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate impacts.Combining the pledges of 154 countries, the report covers 71 per cent of global emissions. Even if every country fully implemented their obligatory plans under the Paris Agreement and also met conditional targets, emissions cuts would still amount to just nine per cent.To keep warming within the Paris Agreement’s fallback limit of 2°C above pre-industrial levels, emissions would need to fall by 37 per cent by 2035.Even if efforts to cut emissions succeed, the UN warned earlier this month that the world is on track for a temporary or potentially prolonged overshoot of the 1.5°C limit.

The news prompted an EU warning that countries must prepare for a potential 3°C temperature rise by 2100.Could private investors move the needle on global warming?In a second report, also published on 27 October, the UN found that global climate finance is increasing but still falls far short of what is needed.Global climate finance averaged $1.9 trillion (€1.7tn) a year in 2023-24, up 32 per cent from 2021-22. The increase was driven largely by private investment in low-emissions technologies, including renewables, as well as household spending on electric vehicles, solar power and heat pumps.So with government efforts failing, could private investment make up the shortfall?A separate report by the charity Oxfam, published ahead of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye, argues that for the wealthiest investors the incentives often steer them in the wrong direction.Not only are the super-rich fuelling the climate crisis through polluting activities, they’re also “profiteering from pain” – sometimes reaping a “double dividend”: first from the industries driving climate breakdown, then from the businesses involved in disaster preparation and recovery, says Oxfam.How are the super-rich profiting from the climate crisis?Oxfam’s new ‘Destroy and Rebuild Index’, within the report ‘Disaster Divide: How climate chaos deepens inequality and enriches the few’, looked at 217 companies, some in industries that drive climate breakdown and others in industries that prepare for or rebuild after climate disasters.

The companies in the index not only made an average profit of $1.8 billion (€1.6bn) in 2025 but paid out more than $1bn on average to shareholders, according to the charity. The global disaster recovery market is forecast to grow from $70bn (€63bn) to $92bn (€84bn) a year by 2029.Oxfam says the investments of the world’s 1,000 richest billionaires were linked to 486 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2025. If they were a country, they would rank as the world’s 19th biggest polluter. 71 per cent of those investments are in high-polluting sectors such as oil, gas and chemicals.Emissions of the super-rich linked to millions of deathsOxfam says the wealthiest also contribute disproportionately to the emissions driving the crisis.

The richest 0.1 per cent – around eight million people – emit more than the poorest 44 per cent of humanity combined, accounting for around 3.5 billion people. Oxfam estimates that emissions from the richest one per cent have been responsible for around 20 per cent of global warming since 1990. A single year of their emissions will cause an estimated 1.9 million excess heat-related deaths over the following century, according to the report.Calling climate disasters “inequality machines”, Oxfam points to research published in the journal Nature showing flood deaths are seven times higher in more unequal countries.Yet the wealthy are best placed to shield themselves, from buying safer homes to hiring private firefighters.

Rich households can also absorb higher food costs and insure their assets. Poorer people tend to live in more exposed areas and in lower-quality housing, with fewer savings to fall back on. Oxfam is calling on governments to curb the emissions of the super-rich, including those linked to their investments, to make rich countries provide far more grant-based finance for adaptation, and to end profiteering from climate disasters.