Ah, the sweet scent of self-awareness wafting through the hallowed halls of climate orthodoxy. A new article from Nature titled “Private Aviation is Making a Growing Contribution to Climate Change” pulls back the velvet curtain on the jet-setting hypocrisy of the ultra-wealthy, and boy, is it rich. Literally. For years, skeptics like Michael Crichton have pointed out the glaring contradictions between the climate rhetoric of the global elite and their private jet-fueled lifestyles. Now, the same critique has oozed into the very peer-reviewed journals that once dismissed such observations as heresy.
The Study That Took Off
The Nature piece explores the carbon carnage of private aviation, quantifying the annual emissions of private jets at a hefty 15.6 million tons of CO2 in 2023. For context, that’s about the same as the yearly emissions of Croatia. Nearly half of these flights were under 500 km—essentially airborne Ubers for billionaires—and some were as short as 50 km. In one hilarious (or infuriating) twist, many jets weren’t even carrying passengers but were repositioned empty. Efficiency, thy name is not “private aviation.”
The report notes that while commercial aviation’s carbon footprint is broadly understood, private jets occupy a particularly egregious spot in the emissions hierarchy. They emit 5-9 times more CO2 per passenger than a commercial flight, depending on whether you’re in economy or lounging in business class. Yet, despite their planetary bloviating, the elites’ addiction to private aviation remains unchecked, with emissions growing by 46% between 2019 and 2023.
Abstract
Commercial aviation’s contribution to climate change is growing, but the global role of private aviation is not well quantified. Here we calculate the sector’s CO2 emissions, using flight tracker data from the ADS-B Exchange platform for the period 2019 to 2023. Flight times for 25,993 private aircraft and 18,655,789 individual flights in 2019-2023 are linked to 72 aircraft models and their average fuel consumption. We find that private aviation contributed at least 15.6 Mt CO2 in direct emissions in 2023, or about 3.6 t CO2 per flight. Almost half of all flights (47.4%) are shorter than 500 km. Private aviation is concentrated in the USA, where 68.7% of the aircraft are registered. Flight pattern analysis confirms extensive travel for leisure purposes, and for cultural and political events. Emissions increased by 46% between 2019-2023, with industry expectations of continued strong growth. Regulation is needed to address the sector’s growing climate impact.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01775-z
Where Have We Heard This Before?
Long before Nature decided to go all National Enquirer on the Davos crowd, the late Michael Crichton was calling out the same nonsense. In his 2007 lecture, “Aliens Cause Global Warming,” Crichton argued that environmentalism had morphed into a quasi-religion for the affluent, complete with sin (carbon emissions), indulgences (carbon offsets), and a priestly class of celebrities and politicians eager to atone in public while sinning in private. Crichton’s observations didn’t just age well—they’ve fossilized into truth.
This hypocrisy has always been a favorite target for skeptics, and it’s finally catching up with the climate priesthood. Even leftist commentators have started to gnash their teeth at the contradiction: how can one scold the masses for their SUVs while gallivanting across continents in Gulfstreams?
Davos, Cannes, and COP28: Where Hypocrisy Takes Flight
The Nature article specifically names events like the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Cannes Film Festival, and COP28 as magnets for private jet traffic. These gatherings are not just a who’s who of climate alarmism—they’re a what’s what of conspicuous carbon consumption. In 2023 alone, Davos saw 1,559 private jet flights, while COP28, the UN’s very own climate carnival, added 1,012 flights to the tally.
Here’s the kicker: the same tail numbers pop up at multiple events. Aircraft ferrying delegates to Davos also frequent Cannes and COP28. If ever there were a carbon aristocracy, this is it.
What’s Fueling This Hypocrisy?
The ultra-wealthy’s love affair with private jets is about more than just luxury; it’s about control. Why endure the indignities of TSA pat-downs or missed connections when you can glide through your own terminal? But this convenience comes with a carbon cost that the global elite are happy to externalize—onto you.
The Nature authors recommend regulating private aviation to mitigate its emissions. But let’s not kid ourselves: any such policies would likely exempt the very people they’re meant to target. As the study acknowledges, focusing on CO2 reductions tends to disproportionately burden the less affluent. In other words, the elites’ jet-setting won’t stop, but your gas-powered car might.
The Left Eats Its Own
What’s particularly fascinating about this development is the way the left is turning on itself. Climate activists now accuse their own heroes of being complicit in the planetary apocalypse. Twitter (sorry, X) is aflame with videos like those shared by Stay Grounded, an anti-aviation network calling out celebrity CO2 offenders. Even mainstream outlets like the New York Times have started to notice the glaring disconnect between climate rhetoric and reality.
It’s Schadenfreude of the highest order: the same people who flew into COP28 to scold you for not biking to work are now being publicly skewered by their ideological comrades.
Final Approach: Will Anything Change?
Probably not. The ultra-wealthy will continue to jet around the globe while preaching austerity to the rest of us. What will change is the increasing recognition of this hypocrisy, as even climate faithful can no longer ignore the absurdity of private jets at a climate conference.
The takeaway is clear: the climate crisis, to the extent it exists, is not a crisis for the elite. It’s a crisis for everyone else, to be managed with taxes, regulations, and lifestyle restrictions that leave the jet set untouched. Until the climate faithful are willing to ground their planes, their sermons will remain as hollow as the cargo bays of their empty repositioning flights.
In the meantime, buckle up, folks. The hypocrisy show isn’t landing anytime soon.
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Wow! That lead aircraft is going to be a trick to fly, with one-and-one-half horizontal stabilizers!
VtI
AI Strikes Again!
AI logic: Fingers are to humans as horizontal stabilizers are to jets!
I always enjoy the AI-drawn aircraft. Usually rubbish.
Just wait until they’re AI designed…
Flying with an extra 1/2 horizontal stabilizer: Consider it an added degree of difficulty, like a triple axel in world class skating.
The additional drag created by the right only upper rear stabilizer is an AI design upgrade to prevent the plane owners inane/insane desire to go left….
AI has problems with aircraft. Propellors and landing gear are quite funny.
Tell me again, daddy, the story of how AI is intelligent!
Public transportation and bikes were for peasant scum. Like most restrictions, it is a matter of keeping the hoi polloi in their place.
Commercial aviation’s contribution to climate change is growing, but the global role of private aviation is not well quantified.
“Climate change” is “quantified” with averaged averages of modeled air temperatures (intensive property), that are then averaged into a single witch’s brew.
Nothing in climate science is quantified.
Except we can quantify climate science. The quantum is ZERO. There is no such thing as “climate science.”
I beg to differ. You know nothing of the efficiencies involved. For instance, just like a taxi dropping someone off in the suburbs or some small town, it may be returning to base to pick up new passengers, and the alternative is that the empty plane sit at that remote airport and wait a month for a passenger wanting a ride, which would also mean buying another plane for the busier base.
A 50 km drive to get to the plane is less efficient than flying the plane?
They are calling weather “climate” so of course it is always changing.
The long-term climates aren’t changing a bit. The polar regions are still cold, the Tropics are still warm and the Temperate regions are in-between, the deserts are still dry and the rain-forests are still wet.
Yup, I’m still having trouble getting my orange tree seedlings to grow here in Wisconsin.
Just FYI, those two conditions are connected. Seems like destinations are destinations because they aren’t good (or cheap) places to park a lot of planes. Davos, for example.
Another ironic twist: vandalized aircraft often have to be flown to where they can be repaired before they can be used for passenger travel. For example, repainting an aircraft requires not only extra air miles and fuel, but the use of petroleum based cleaners, chemical waste disposal, repainting/refinishing with high volitile organic content surface treatments, and sometimes replacement of plastic and sythetic rubber components. This silly, low-key eco-terrorism performance art actually supports large segments of the petroleum, plastics, and insurance industries, and benefits those financiers and speculators who would keep commodity prices high.
Oh, but, but, but, oil can be replaced with …. wait for it … hydrogen!
Is a /sarc needed?
If they do ban private jets, it will just be the ones used by those dirty business people and celebrities. The self-anointed climate elite are too darn busy and just too important to be inconvenienced by such bans.
Why ban? We need more of them. More CO2 more jobs more rich investing in more jobs. It is the private sector that makes the money the rest of the world lives of.
Story tip The ozone layer is HEALING! Hole over Antarctica is smaller and started later than expected this year, promising study reveals | Daily Mail Online
The Ozone hole strikes again.
” Flight pattern analysis confirms extensive travel for leisure purposes, and for cultural and political events”
I say BS to that, anyone on the level of private jet use has an accountant(s) that looks to
be able to deduct the expenses like landing fees, fuel, crew expenses and other such
costs as a tax business expense. Look at the company NetJets as an example.
If you can pay for the accountant why not make use of it. I would. I know a lot in the car racing world that use this hobby as a tax business expense. The money would have gone to the government anyway trough taxation.
When I was a young my father built a business and employed a pilot
and charted an airplane, not a jet but a small plane and
he had autos placed around at different locations. That was the first
time I traveled by air. And yes he had bean counters tracking every nickel spent.
Were clients wined and dined? Without a doubt. All legally.
I met Hubert Humphrey at a small airport one morning and got my picture
with him published on the front page of a local newspaper. My dad later sold
the business and moved on in a different direction.
You seem to possibly have conflated extensive with expensive.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s family has some property in SW Montana and
he is said to visit at times. I would venture that they fly private and have
it set up to declare the trip as a business expense thus tax deductible.
Conflated indeed.
In an interview some years ago I heard Bill Gates complain about the cost of “green” jet fuel.
More here …
Everything you need to know about the wild world of alternative jet fuelsHow trash, cooking oil, and green electricity could power your future flights.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/24/1073568/all-about-alternative-jet-fuels-safs/
“Green Crude:The Quest to Unlock Algae’s Energy Potential”
“last year sold an algae-derived jet fuel to United Airlines, which used it to fly a Boeing 737-800 from Houston to Chicago…”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/green_crude_the_quest_to__unlock_algaes_energy_potential
There’s a very successful industrialist who lives in my village in England, who’s also a climate zealot. I ran into him at a lunch a few years ago and he started banging on about global warming and how the earth was going to end if didn’t stop CO2 emissions. I took him on over various points of fact, and he became more and more frustrated that I wouldn’t just give in to alarmism. I said we’d have to agree to differ, and he replied “well, I’m going to New Zealand for Christmas. I always take my private plane. It’s so much more comfortable than ordinary flights”. You couldn’t make it up.
It’s good to point out the hypocrisy. It is wrong to say one thing and do the opposite. But it is even more absurd to keep making the core claim that emissions of CO2 from using fossil fuels have any quantifiable impact on the climate system at all.
From the abstract:
“Regulation is needed to address the sector’s growing climate impact.”
No. There is no “climate” impact to begin with, that can ever be reliably quantified.
I have no problem with private jet aviation for those who can afford it. It is an amazing accomplishment to be able to jet around the world at will. Just don’t try to tell me I’m having a climate impact when I hop in my truck and go to town when I feel like it.
Recently, I’ve started to wonder if these politicians, billionaires and celebrities are really running a massive gaslight operation to purposely sabotage the climate change agenda they otherwise zealously promote. Of course, any genuinely serious effort at eliminating CO2 from the economy would be decimating to their wealth, political power and lifestyles which they obviously would not want to sacrifice. So they transparently participate in this hypocritical behavior that makes it difficult to impossible for any thinking individual to take them and their rhetoric the least bit seriously.
Why? It’s win-win for them. They know that the controversy that they themselves generate with this transparently hypocritical behavior sabotages the agenda so that they won’t ever have to sacrifice their wealth, influence or lifestyles. But they will get to keep their virtue signaling points with their hip peers and the useful idiots who do continue to take them seriously. It’s even better for those who get to profit from the agenda through political power, subsidies or enforced monopolies.
As long as “climate change” remains a religion to a gullible critical mass, the scam will continue and they will continue to be rich, hip & popular without meaningful consequence.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
Exception.
You will have exotic travel and you will be happy if you are elite.
I have no problem with private jets, I do have a problem with liars and hypocrites. I am against most regulations however I would make an exception for those flying private jets. You can only fly private jets if you aren’t part of the CAGW crowd. I would hate to see you looking like a liar and hypocrite. My only reservation is that if the liars and hypocrites were to fly commercial we would have to share planes with them.
“The ultra-wealthy will continue to jet around the globe while preaching austerity to the rest of us.”
The ultra-wealthy know that CAGW is BS so like Obama they build their mansions just about sea level, use private jets, etc. So why the preaching? Likely because one way or another there is a profit motive.
Why focus only on private jets.
All pro CAGW proponents use fossil fuels every day.
They are all hypocrits