Climate change and class structure: greenhouse gas emissions of social classes in the United Kingdom

This interdisciplinary research article is situated at the interface of environmental studies and sociology. By bringing an ecological analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to bear on contemporary class theory, we provide a new framework to analyze the social underpinnings of climate change. Our work offers the first operationalization of Andreas Reckwitz's theory of a fourfold class structure in post-industrial societies for the quantitative analysis of GHG footprints. Engaging with Reckwitz's diagnosis of a split middle class, we find no major division in terms of per capita GHG emissions within the middle layers. While the 'new middle class' exhibits slightly higher emissions than the 'old middle class', despite cultivating more pronounced pro-environmental values, the two middle classes are mainly differentiated through compositional factors. Based on representative expenditure data for UK households, we reveal that the old middle class has comparatively high housing-related emissions, while the new middle class creates substantially more environmental pressure through their mobility. At the same time, our analysis uncovers major disparities in terms of total emissions elsewhere in the class matrix. We demonstrate that the lower class has the smallest carbon footprint, while the upper class plays in an ecological (and not merely economic) league of its own. We discuss how these findings provide new insights into contemporary class relations and contribute to a better interdisciplinary understanding of the nexus between GHG emissions and power structures.