It’s not only the top 1% that are doing this. Well, yes they do, but they are all fueled by ignorance of people that keep them in power. There is nothing wrong with having ridiculous amounts of money, there is something very wrong when those amounts of money get you immunity to law and regulation. Because that destroys the point of regulation anyway - and they are supposed to keep everyone safe.
I have had this conversation with parents and grandparents, if we ignore the ecology for a bit and just look at the numbers and speed we are consuming oil. According to (they cite their sources) worldometers.info we have 39 years left before we consume/pump all oil. There is a possibility that even my grandparents could outlive oil, but there is a high possibility that my parents will outlive oil at the current rate - let alone me and our generation.
The thing is that we NEED oil. We need it for so many things like plastics, medication, but also transportation. Ships, planes all currently need oil to move as there is no way to power them all alternatively YET. So my question was why spend the oil on cars, the one thing that we know how to and CAN power using electricity. The response from grandparents was that they would never buy an electric car. This mindset then fuels people across generations, and it is so dangerous. When you include the consequences for earth if we would spend all the oil at this rate, it gets even more frightening. We won’t need oil at that point, we wouldn’t exist anyway.