From The Daily Caller
Chris White Tech Reporter
December 09, 2019 11:15 AM ET
Billionaire Bill Gates and former Vice President Al Gore responded to criticism that their use of jets somehow conflicts with their desire to fight global warming, Axios reported Monday.
Gates suggested to Axios’s Amy Harder that his heavy investments in green energy are effectively enough to outweigh his private jet usage. The Microsoft founder owns a private jet and is one of the wealthiest people in the world.
“I am investing in climate change very broadly and substantial amounts of money,” Gates, who heads a coalition of billionaires who are investing in clean energy tech, said in an interview with Axios over the summer.
He added: “I don’t think there is anyone doing more, but if there is, congratulations to whoever that is.” (RELATED: Exclusive: TheDCNF Asked Paris Climate Accord Backers If They’d Support Banning Private Jets. Most Didn’t Respond)
Gore, a politician-turned well-healed activist and vegan, made a similar point when confronted. “He recognizes how important these everyday choices are, while spending most of his time working to catalyze a global effort to change laws and policies,” a Gore representative told Harder.
The former vice president told CNN in 2017 he didn’t own a private jet, but in 2013 admitted to “sometimes” chartering a private jet. Gore has also been criticized for his enormous home energy usage, which is estimated to be 34 times the average American household.
Representatives for Gore did not respond to a request for comment when the Daily Caller News Foundation asked him in 2018 if he would be willing to ban the of use of private jets to help address climate change. The Gates Foundation also did not respond when the DCNF reached out.
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I’m heavily invested in green energy, that’s why I drive an SUV.
Everyone should be heavily invested in green energy, and have a jet to fly around in. Especially to attend their green energy meetings.
So Billy Gates says it’s OK that he produces kilotonnes of CO2 with his plane and lifestyle because he makes money from the industry that AGW has spawned? Because we all know he would NOT be ‘investing’ to LOSE money… right?
Imagine if, instead of cancelling any supposed (and imaginary) good he is doing by making even more money, he curtailed his lifestyle and so contributed to cancellation of ‘carbon-debt’ by those who cannot afford to invest in the money-making scam… I mean schemes he can get into?
Perhaps he could point us to the improvements in the AGW situation his personal investments have made?
I’m also doing something, so I guess I can justify the use of my 12 mpg 3/4 ton truck. Also, if I turn off one light switch, I suppose it’s okay if I leave another one on.
You still have lights?
One of the companies questioned was boasting of promoting ‘green jet fuel’- does anyone know what that means?
Fuel from algae.
If I was a billionaire I’d not hesitate to own a private jet and fly about everywhere, with a large entourage scurrying about in front of my arrival. But you’d not find me talking blather about Climate-Doom™ to the fake media. I may however donate a million or so to WUWT and provide the staff with sponsored jet travel to meetings for nix.
Just like rabid greenies do regardless of Climate-Doom™.
“…his heavy investments in green energy are effectively enough to outweigh his private jet usage.”
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Bullpuckey! Investing in something means you buy shares in it, any amount up to 100% of the company. But that doesn’t create any more “green” energy, it just transfers the ownership of those shares to you. If you don’t own them, someone else will. So his investments in “green” energy result in zero emissions reductions.
But what the hell, as long as the media and gullible believers and politicians fall for it, why wouldn’t he?
Al Gore may be ‘well-heeled’, as in ‘obscenely affluent, but I doubt he has been even minimally healed, much less ‘well-healed’, especially of his inconvenient hypocrisy.
Remember, the Gore family made most of their wealth from COAL, OIL and TOBACCO! Nuff sed!
So what the argument boils down to is that rich people can continue as normal and poor people need to stop flying to save the planet.
What a surprise, I bet no one saw that coming.
Let me translate this so everyone understands it clearly. They say they make investments into green technologies and that this outweighs their use of private jets. Now an honest translation: I make investments in companies that claim they save the planet. I fully trust that the pressure built up by green radical groups will build enough leverage to coax lawmakers into throwing money at those otherwise forlorn businesses making them profitable which in turn makes me stellar profits out of the pockets of defenseless tax- and ratepayers. And I expect all of you to cut me slack for preaching to everyone to live like a pauper but my use of a private jet and enjoyment of all other perks life offers to a billionaire – paid for by those taxpayers – shall be above scrutiny as I have a stake in this green racket. Wow, I was exposed to tons of conceitedness and arrogance in my life but those two really push it.
People such as Gates have sanction over your life. With wealth comes great power .That power will be turned against you.
As it already is .
Interpretation: Do as I say, not as I do.
Twenty-two years ago I planted a tree; it’s still in my garden. So can I continue to fly and eat meat?
It would be helpful if liberals would give us a list of which existential threats and crimes that you can and can’t buy your way out of.
You need to be careful when you’re really loaded you don’t feed the green crocodile and become a useful idiot snack in the big scheme of things-
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/personal-carbon-allowances-budgets
This set of comments cuts like a knife!
Unfortunate that you can’t fix stupid; quoting some philosopher.
If CO2 accumulation in the air will not cause warming of the climate (as most people on this website believe), then we can forgive Gates for his use of private planes. But he shouldn’t lecture me if I decide to share a plane with 200 other people to go on vacation once a year!
By the way, where is the post about Miss How Dare You (Greta Thunberg) being Time Magazine’s Person of the Year?
They talk control of other people’s lives and justify not living by those controls because they do so much to control our lives.
Bill Gates is no hypocrite. He is not attacking anyone else for their energy usage. He is responsible for managing his enormous fortune – he cannot just stuff it under the mattress. He has explicitly chosen to invest a large amount of his fortune into next gen energy production, including new nuclear reactor technologies. Technologies which the readers of WUWT are highly supportive of development as opposed to renewables.
Al Gore is a different story. He attacks others for their energy useage, and he is not a successful entrepreneur sitting on top of a massive fortune that he has to manage and achieve a reasonable return, and promote effective technologies. Most of his profit seeking has been in the form of peddling renewable energy credits – a form of rent seeking that does not involve investing large amounts of his own personal fortune, but rather trying to benefit from the government picking winners and losers.
“I am investing in climate change….”
And there it is. ‘Nuff said.
If a rich person sponsors research into measles vaccine, does that let him/her choose to reject personal innoculation?
Clearly not. Choice of private ways of life has no effect on spreading the measles danger.
So it is with weather. Your personal moral choice does not alter the physics. Geoff S