24 November 2011: Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) commissioned research, published today, which highlights that the people who emit the least carbon in the UK are most likely to suffer from the consequences of climate change.
The report – The distribution of UK household CO2 emissions – “provides the first integrated dataset of household emissions and confirms the direct relationship between household income and carbon emissions – the top 10 per cent earners emit more than twice as much carbon as the lowest 10 per cent.”
A second report – ‘Climate change, justice and vulnerability‘ – states that “The most socially vulnerable neighbourhoods in the UK tend to be in urban or coastal locations. There is a North-South divide in extreme socially derived flood-vulnerability in England, while nearly a quarter of London neighbourhoods are classed as extremely socially heat-vulnerable.“