Ultra-wealthy people zooming across the world on their private jets, lounging on yachts and conspicuous by their Instagrammable consumption are among the most easily identified individual culprits when it comes to the climate crisis – but new research argues that it is not just their heady lifestyles to blame, but also their bank accounts.

Through their ownership of companies and private financial and physical assets, from oil producers to property developments, the super-rich are responsible for an outsized slice of the greenhouse gases that are overheating the planet. The top 1% of people by wealth, through their shareholdings and investments, control about a quarter of global annual emissions in total.

Greenpeace has calculated the “climate debt” of these high net worth individuals, by attributing to them their share of the damage done to the climate by the assets they own. By this reckoning, the world’s richest cause nearly $1tn a year of damage to the climate.