A recent groundbreaking study asserts that increasing living standards, cutting working hours, and ensuring a habitable climate are achievable goals that can coexist if we are prepared to address extreme inequality.
For a long time, the conversation about climate change has been presented as a difficult choice between two disagreeable futures. One involves continuing with our current levels of consumption and emission until the planet becomes progressively unstable. The alternate option is to cut back drastically, leading average people to feel that they are being asked to sacrifice their standards of living.
The narrative has now been changed by a bold report from the World Inequality Lab. The report posits that humans could improve living standards for most people, curtail extreme inequality, and still maintain global warming underneath 2C by the century’s end.
The Global Justice Report, unveiled recently, outlines an ambitious model, not a forecast, to restructure the global economy by 2100 so that wellbeing, equality, and climate stability are addressed collectively.
The report’s core principle is the belief that ongoing material consumption is not necessary for a good life. Instead, the study advocates for “sufficiency,” incorporating shorter working hours, improved health and education, cleaner energy, altered diets, decreased pressure on land, and a significantly reduced wealth gap.
According to the report’s main scenario, the average monthly income would converge to about €5,000 (£4,250) per individual in every country by 2100. This would result in accelerated growth in less affluent regions and slower growth in today’s wealthiest economies. However, the writers argue that most people in wealthier countries would still gain as income would be more evenly distributed, and people would have more leisure time.
Approximately 90% of the world’s population would see their monetary income double by the end of the century, as per the model. The report claims that when additional leisure and the avoided harm of uncontrolled heating are included, over 99% of people would be better off.
The report also presents one of its most eye-catching proposals – a significant reduction in working hours. The goal is not merely to work less but to redirect human efforts towards healthcare, education, culture and other low-carbon sectors of the economy.
Gender equality is another aspect associated with this shift in the report. The model anticipates equal pay and an equal distribution of paid and domestic labour for men and women, asserting that a fair division of work both inside and outside the home is crucial for any credible vision of societal progress.
Despite these changes, the report stresses that rapid decarbonisation remains crucial to stay within climate thresholds. Energy systems must swiftly transition from fossil fuels, with electricity sourced from low-carbon means by mid-century and significant investments in renewables, electrification, and cleaner industrial processes. The report points out, though, that technology alone won’t be sufficient. Without adjustments in consumption, land use, and inequality, financing the energy transition and sustaining it politically becomes increasingly difficult.
The report proposes a Global Justice Fund, financed by a global wealth tax and a top income tax on the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population. The fund would aid climate investment, health, education, and country-level dividends, particularly in less wealthy countries. The report also envisages a world sovereign fund, new types of international currency, and a shift in voting power in institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The Global Justice Fund would spend an average of 10.3% of world GDP each year between 2026 and 2060, a marked increase from the less than 0.4% currently represented by official development aid and the combined budgets of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. The report notes that this increase reflects the scale of the challenge, as climate investment alone is expected to require 3-4% of world GDP annually in the upcoming decades.
The effect on wealth would be extensive. The poorest half of the world would see its share of global wealth increase from 2% to 30%, while the share held by billionaires would decrease from 6% to 0.05%. The authors of the report argue that this shift is not only a matter of fairness but also of climate logic, as the wealthiest people have disproportionately benefited from high-carbon growth and hold much of the capital needed for the transition.
Several of the report’s authors, including Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel, branded the plan as “radical” in an article for the Guardian. They argued that the alternative is to accept a future shaped by deepening inequality, climate breakdown, and political instability. They wrote that the obstacle is “not technical impossibility”, but political choice.
That is also the report’s greatest vulnerability. It outlines what could be done, not what is currently likely to happen. Global wealth taxes, a new international financial order and a managed shift away from overconsumption would face fierce political resistance, particularly from those who profit most from the present system. Even the authors acknowledge that this would require major coalition-building, social movements, and legislative action.
Nonetheless, the report is significant because it challenges a familiar mood of defeat. It does not claim that a fair, healthy, and sustainable world would come naturally, or that the transition will be easy. Instead, it asserts that the figures can add up, that climate safety does not have to spell worse lives for most people, and that equality is not a detour from the environmental crisis but one of the conditions for solving it.
