Carbon is a major issue and
set to become a worse one since the EPA apparently can't regulate it anymore.
And there's a lot of things that contribute to the excess of carbon
flooding our atmosphere, agriculture, transportation, things like that.
Cargo ships, private jets though, something that we should focus on.
Now, at large, private planes only contribute about 2% of all
the carbon that goes out into the planet in a given year.
Now the way I said that you might think it's only 2%, but no no hold on,
don't just let me say that and accept it.
They're just private planes.
Why do they get to make 2% of all the carbon?
Have you been on a private plane this week?
Do you know anyone who's been on a private plane in the last year?
I don't know that I do.
And yet they contribute 2% of all of the carbon.
Now the little visualization that you saw next week,
we put that back up because there was this great little video that was put together.
And you can see it at earthbound,
it is a comparison of the carbon emissions of a private plane, that massive mountain
of carbon versus what a person flying economy contributes in terms of carbon.
Now, obviously the private jet which could be for
as small as one person who's taking that trip is way way, way more carbon.
But let's also be clear that the economy class that's contributing a lot to
flight in general is a massive outsized contributor to the carbon
flooding the atmosphere, and thus contributing to climate change as well.
But I gotta give you a couple of these numbers because they're so fascinating and
great work by real world visuals and earthbound for putting this together.
A Jumbo jet flight from London to New York adds about 200 metric tons of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere.
Now, if there's 349 passengers,
the maximum capacity of some of these planes, that works out to 572 kg each.
But business class passengers take up more space than economy class, first class,
more even than that.
So, a transatlantic passenger in economy class adds greenhouse gas to
the atmosphere equivalent to four weeks of emissions from a typical European
household.
Each first class passenger contributes more than 38 weeks, but
that still is for a passenger plane.
So one flight for
one person is equal to more than half a year of an entire European household.
When you go to a private jet that uses as much fuel as nine first class passengers,
26 business class passengers or 80 economy class passenger.
Which means that crossing the Atlantic in a private jet adds about 25 metric tons of
carbon dioxide.
That's six years of emissions from an average European household.
And so all of this is really bad and there's not nearly enough focus on it.
But one person taking one private plane trip can contribute going on
towards a decade of a regular person's contributions, and that's
a European family Europe contributes quite a bit, two carbon emissions.
When you look at people in the developing world, you're talking
about literally decades of their emissions just for you to go to Zurich one way.
And I know that this gets a bit in the weeds, but these numbers are just so
amazing, I don't feel like they're talked about nearly enough.
>> Yeah, I mean, I would I agree that it's a problem and
it does feel like it's in the weeds, but there's an indirect way to address it,
which is income redistribution, wealth redistribution.
So you don't have, I mean, think about how much it costs to both by private jet.
But especially right now to fuel the private jet,
these are people who have like, they literally have money to burn, okay,
through the fuel that they're purchasing for these private jets.
And so I say that to make the point that if we had an equity based economic
system that ensured that everyone is paying their fair share into the system,
I would argue that it would dramatically lower the number of
individuals who have the money to burn on a private jet.
And it would also obviously address other issues.
Because just to be honest and thinking about this from political priorities,
legislative priorities and how people are likely to respond to this.
Even though it is a problem, when you mentioned the 2%,
I think a lot of people are immediately just gonna disregard this issue.
And so when you tackle it in a more indirect way,
I think in an indirect way that solves a lot of other issues by the way,
including the cutting of all of our social safety net programs.
Yeah, and you're fair, and look, I don't think that we should put as much attention
into it as we do into transportation or agriculture and those sorts of things.
The issue is that those are at least in their defense issues that affect everyone.
Everyone needs to drive or
get about in some way everyone needs to eat whether they meet or not.
I mean, this is something where they are getting away with such an outsized
contribution, just for
a very small handful of the richest people in the world.
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