Joana Chua has always known exactly how she wants to present herself. The best-dressed woman in any room, she favors bold colors, flouncy skirts, and a meticulous attention to detail. She never has a hair out of place, or an unwashed dish in the sink. A commanding presence, she hosts gatherings filled with laughter, Lumpia, and an endless spread of Filipino dishes shoveled towards her guests. Holidays, particularly Christmas, are a spectacle—her home transformed into a shimmering display of tinsel and festive indulgence, straight from a Christmas edition of a modern farmhouse catalogue. Among the abundance, one tradition remains rooted in nostalgia: the cracking open of Terry’s orange-shaped chocolate. It’s a luxury she can now afford in excess, but as she unwraps the foil, she remembers a time when a single chocolate was divided among her family, each person savoring one tiny slice for days.
Joana’s childhood in Laguna, Philippines, was defined by scarcity. Fetching water for showers, watching television through a neighbor’s window—these were the rhythms of her upbringing. Yet, through resilience and determination, she secured a college education and made her way to the United States. She worked her way up as a personal assistant, until she was taking phone calls from Obama, and scheduling the many, many private plane flights of her billionaire boss. Joana has truly experienced the farthest of both extremes, and has let us in on some of her experiences.
As a personal assistant to the ultra-wealthy, Joana entered a realm she never imagined existed. Her boss, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, led a life of relentless opulence—an endless rotation of high-profile events, luxury estates, and spontaneous trips around the world. To Joana, attending parties alongside celebrities and politicians felt like a testament to how far she had come. As someone who didn’t grow up in the football fandom breeding ground that is the US, she had to be told that her office neighbor, Joe Montana, is “kind of a big deal”. “It’s just crazy to think about how different my life is”, Joana states, reflecting back on a childhood where she wouldn’t have had access to watching football stars, let alone being surrounded by them.
Her boss had more money than he could’ve ever spent, but that didn't seem to stop him from trying. Joana would work with his house managers to coordinate the visits to some of his seven homes across California, Colorado, DC, New York, and Switzerland. His main homes had cleaning staff, chefs, drivers, and security guards ready for his use. He could fly anywhere in the world he wanted at a day’s notice - maybe on Philanthropy business to one of his many partner organizations, attending a gala, or spending a casual weekend at a vacation home. Joana was invited on many of these escapades, even sometimes as a friend.
For Christmas, she was in charge of picking out the gifts for his wife, children, and anyone else that might be lucky enough to receive her selections. Just another day on the job, she knew the usual lists to pull from - maybe a bag from Hermes? Joana picked up the phone and decided to call Tiffany’s, who of course knew her boss’s name and sent someone over. The sales people arrived in freshly pressed dress pants and collared shirts, their suitcases brimming with diamond-studded pieces. “The necklace I chose that day was $87,000”, Joana remarked, “At some point, it just becomes normal.”
One of her boss’ more expensive spending habits was his mistress. A retired Swedish model about 30 years his junior, she was provided her own American Express card that never saw below $200,000 of monthly spending. Joana’s boss was desperate for his lover’s attention, blind to her constant cancellations of their monthly visits and rarely returned calls. His wife had long had dementia, although who’s to know whether their marriage problems came first. His children never called, relationships strained by his absent fathering methods. He learned over the years that his friends used him for his money and were entirely too shallow to care about him in his old age. Joana was paid to spend time with him, but over time learned to care for him as a person and not just a boss. By the time he passed away, Joana might have been his closest friend, “he became like family to me”. One of the most successful men on the planet, he died lonely and sad, full of regrets over his priorities in life.
But it wasn’t just human relationships that suffered. The carbon footprint of this lifestyle was staggering. The average Filipino emits 1.37 tons of CO₂ per year, while the world’s top 1% averages 76 tons. But what about the billionaires of the world - the top 0.00003%? These illusive individuals place huge emphasis on privacy, so we’re missing a lot of data on how much they emit.
Most of us truly can’t imagine never being bounded by the confines of money - what it would be like to never have to check the bank account before a purchase. Anything Joana’s boss wanted, he could get without a second thought - he simply tells her and it shows up. One of his many purchases, the aforementioned Tiffany’s necklace, can serve as an example for carbon assessment. While this is far from the overconsumption and slave labor seen in fast fashion - the emissions of an item like this are different from your average necklace. The cumulation of precious metal and gems mining and luxury air transportation makes this necklace over 16 times as carbon costly at 5.03 tons of CO₂. That’s over 3 times the total annual emissions of the average Filipino. Now apply this to the plethora of purchases he makes throughout a year - from fine art to luxury alcohol to clothes.
The undisputed largest impact on emissions of someone with Joana’s boss’ lifestyle comes from travel. Joana’s boss and his wife would use their G650 plane, large enough for 20 people and complete with a king sized bed. Its main use was to commute between his homes on opposite coasts, a weekly occurrence and an 80k trip each way. The plane didn’t have a place to dock on the east coast, so it would fly back to SF every trip, doubling the emissions. Between the biweekly round trips across the nation, and constant travel elsewhere, he spent $5 million per month on travel. Based on airfare estimates alone, he emits a whopping total of 30,000 tons of CO₂ annually.
Joana’s childhood experience is one shared by many - around 17.5 million people in the Philippines struggle with low income and basic needs insecurity, earning less than the equivalent of $1.41 per day per person. Many face limited access to education, healthcare, and stable jobs, often living in substandard housing with food insecurity. Economic hardships are worsened by natural disasters, which are worsening with climate change. The Philippines is highly vulnerable to climate change due to its location in the Pacific, facing frequent typhoons, rising sea levels, and extreme heat. Coastal communities risk flooding, while droughts threaten agriculture. Coral reefs, crucial for fisheries and tourism, are dying from ocean warming. Poverty and rapid urbanization make recovery harder. Despite strong climate advocacy, it remains one of the most at-risk nations.
Joana’s mother - “Mamma Trini” - followed Joana to the US, where she worked as a caretaker for decades. She had to move back to the Philippines last year since she couldn’t afford to retire in the US. Mamma trini can attest that not much has changed in the years since Joana was a child when it comes to the widespread poverty crisis, but climate risks continue to worsen. “Typhoons and heat are the main problems for me. We have always had to deal with typhoons, but they’ve become a whole new [beast] in recent years.” Typhoons in the Philippines have become stronger, wetter, and more destructive due to climate change, causing worse flooding, storm surges, and longer recovery times for vulnerable communities. “I’ve seen many families lose their homes entirely, with no money to build another”. Their homes, often made of lightweight materials like wood and tin, can be easily destroyed by strong winds and washed away by floods, leaving families displaced with nowhere to go. Those who contribute the least to climate change bear the heaviest burden, a stark contrast to the experiences of the elite.
“It’s hard to see the suffering when you visit. It’s all around” Joana recalls. She helps her friends and family out, but doesn’t have the capabilities to single handedly lift them from poverty. Story about child in pouring rain holding a baby and knocking on their uber window to ask for food. Her friend is so used to this type of thing that she denies the child her snacks without a second thought. Joana scolds her and forces the friend to give up her food. It shocks her that Filipinos are so numb to that type of suffering, just as she has become accustomed to her boss’ constant spending and celebrity-filled lifestyle.
Joana exists between two worlds: the Philippines, where resilience and community reign despite hardship, and the orbit of billionaires, where abundance fails to fill emotional voids. She feels deep gratitude for the opportunities she’s had, but she also sees the absurdity of it all. “One of my boss’ flights to Zurich costs $90,000. The average annual salary in the Philippines is $429. It’s hard to watch money evaporate when you know what it could do for people,” She says. “At the same time, you get completely used to it, until you don’t even notice it anymore.”
Her boss, a man who could buy anything, died alone, while in the Philippines, where people have little, they find happiness in community even through the hardest of times. Joana reflects on times where they had no air conditioning in the sweltering heat. She and her friends would all run outside to “take a shower in the rain. In that kind of sticky heat it cools you down”. After the short burst of dumping rain was over, they would admire the “crazy rainbows you get. The humidity just bounces the light around”. Even now, Joana is always taking advantage of Filipino-American companionship. Despite achieving her American dreams, and the crazy weather and soul wrenching poverty on the streets of the Philippenes, she often longs to move back, “maybe just for six months a year,” she jokes to her husband.
Extreme wealth is not just an environmental catastrophe—it’s a hollow pursuit. Billionaires must be held accountable, not just for their emissions, but for the way their unchecked consumption erodes the fabric of society. More than ever, we must redefine success—not as accumulation, but as connection, responsibility, and care for the world and those in it.
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