Spanish climate activists defaced a multimillion-dollar superyacht docked in Ibiza over the weekend, a social media video shows. The yacht, a sprawling vessel called Kaos, is reportedly owned by Nancy Walton Laurie, a billionaire Walmart heiress.
Activists from Futuro Vegetal, an environmental group that aims to fight climate change, shared a video on Twitter Sunday morning showing them standing in front of the Kaos yacht and holding a poster that reads, "You Consume Others Suffer." At least one portion of the boat's exterior, the one closest to land, is seen covered in a mixture of red and black spray paint.
Members of Futuro Vegetal pointed out that carbon emissions across the board are highest among the world's richest people.
"The richest 1% of the world population pollutes more than the poorest 50%," the activists are heard saying in the video.
"They are condemning us to a future of pain, misery and desolation," they continued. "They are destroying our planet, compromising the habitability of the land and everything, to lead a standard of living that goes beyond the limits of reason."
The two climate activists who appeared in Futuro Vegetal's social media video were detained on Sunday, according to the group, which said in an update shared on Twitter that the pair would likely be released on Monday afternoon.
No podemos seguir así, es una cuestión de vida o muerte. Escúchanos, comparte nuestro mensaje!
— FuturoVegetal🍒 (@FuturoVegetal) July 16, 2023
Actualización de las compañeras: siguen detenidas desde esta mañana y se prevee que sean trasladadas al juzgado, siendo puestas en libertad mañana a mediodía.
APÓYANOS. pic.twitter.com/Bx0IJjER06
According to Yacht Bible, an industry news site that says it tracks yacht purchases and ownership globally, Kaos belongs to Laurie, the granddaughter of Walmart cofounder Bud Walton. Laurie inherited a stake in Walmart from her father and received enough stock in the company when he died in 1995 to make her a billionaire, according to Forbes. She took the 268th spot on the magazine's billionaires list in 2023, and her net worth is valued at around $8.7 billion, according to Forbes.
Grassroots climate activists, climate scientists and world leaders have for years been calling on the rich to reduce carbon emissions, as they point to the disproportionate greenhouse gas contributions from wealthy countries, like the United States, and individuals. In 2020, the United Nations urged the world's richest 1% to cut their carbon footprints by around 97% in order to stave off ongoing climate change.
Its report that year warned that the global emissions gap, meaning the "difference between where we are likely to be and where we need to be" on climate policy, was dangerously large, and the wealthy were primarily responsible. At the time, the U.N. report said just 10% of the world's population emitted nearly half of the world's carbon pollution.
In a report published in September 2020, the Stockholm Environment Institute estimated that the richest 10% of people, globally, contributed to roughly 50% of worldwide carbon emissions in the years 1995 and 2015 — the timeframe in which the institute conducted its study. By comparison, the poorest 50% were responsible for 7% or 8% of emissions.
Citing portions of that study in its own report on greenhouse gases and climate change, the International Energy Agency noted that the world's richest 0.1% contribute more to global carbon emissions each year than the rest of the wealthiest 10% combined, with the richest 1% polluting roughly 1,000 times more than the poorest 1%. Another report by Oxfam last November suggested that just 125 of the world's wealthiest billionaires emit 3 million tons of carbon dioxide per person, on average, each year, which is about a million times higher than the average annual emissions of the bottom 90%.
CBS News reached out to Walmart and to Laurie but did not receive immediate replies.
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