An Indian-American high- schooler has embarrassed numerous global elites by tracking emissions of the private Jet they fly in, with results that imply their purported concern over climate change could well be hot air.
Seattle student Akash Shendure has ranked more than 150 ultrarich people and their families according to the projected carbon dioxide emissions they produce after tracking the private jet travels of some of the world’s wealthiest people for weeks. The study revealed, among other things, that media moguls Mike Bloomberg and his family, who released 3196 tonnes of CO2 and 4357 tonnes of CO2 respectively, are among the top carbon emitters.
American technology millionaire Thomas Siebel (4649 MT), who supports alternative energy sources and is outspoken about climate change issues, is at the top of the “black” list. Additionally, it includes prominent Silicon Valley and Hollywood elites like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jay-Z, all of whom have CO2 emissions that exceed 2000 MT.
Comparatively, the average American emits 15.52 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, which is a high rate. India emits 1.77 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually per person.
Shendure, a math and physics enthusiast, came up with the notion of monitoring private jet emissions when Twitter shut down an account that tracked Elon Musk’s private flights. He created the website climatejets.com using publicly accessible sources and official data, analysing the data using the Python and R programming languages.
According to his calculations, many owners of private aircraft release hundreds of times more carbon dioxide per flight than the typical American does in a year.
“The message that is often provided to customers is that it’s one of our obligations to basically discomfort ourselves in favour of the planet… But then these, well, very affluent persons are not doing that.”
He told
The article included a disclaimer that some of the jets might have been utilising sustainable aviation fuel and that Akash’s conclusions have not been independently validated.
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos‘ representatives told the newspaper that they utilised renewable fuel to offset all of the emissions from their flights.
His mother is an ER physician, while Akash’s father is a renewable energy entrepreneur with numerous start-ups of his own. He claims that one of the topics his family discusses at dinner is climate change. People of his generation are likewise motivated by this issue to take little steps, like turning off the lights, to reduce their own emissions.
However, he told the newspaper, “they have such negligible effects comparing to merely taking a flight in a commercial airline relative to a private jet.”
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