Step 1: Calculate the relationship between income and CO2 emissions

There is a strong relationship between wealth and CO2 emissions.

In their paper "Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance," Jared Starr et al. show that "40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households," and that the top 1% earners accounted for 15-17% of national emissions.¹

While the paper does not offer a simple equation to directly express the relationship between emissions and income, the authors do provide raw data containing individual income amounts and CO2 emissions.

Using the polyfit method in Python's NumPy² library on these data yields the polynomial coefficients 0.00031 and 2.85592.

Thus, the relationship between income and emissions may be written as:

Step 2: Calculate the victim's annual CO2 emissions

It has been reported that the victim earned $10.2 million in 2024.³ To calculate his estimated yearly emissions we simply enter Thompson’s income into our equation, which results in 3,164.9 tonnes of CO2.

Step 3: Calculate the victim's estimated remaining working years

The victim was aged 50 at the time of his death.⁴ For the sake of these calculations we make the conservative assumptions that the victim's wages would not have increased, that he would retire at age 65, and that his wealth post-retirement would not contribute to further emissions.

Step 4: Calculate the offset

Finally, we multiply the victim's remaining working years by his estimated annual emissions.

By this logic, this action offset the effects of 47,473.5 tonnes of CO2.