On a day when the stark decline of Australia’s environment was laid bare like scorched earth, Drake’s private jet spewed 11 tons of carbon dioxide into the air as the revered rapper flew from Barcelona to Ibiza.
How do we know this? Celebrity Jets, a Twitter account powered by a bot that shows flight paths and — crucially — flight times of private aircraft belonging to musicians, sports stars, Hollywood heavyweights and more.
The bot was written by Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old boffin who skyrocketed from relative obscurity to notoriety when Tesla billionaire Elon Musk reportedly tried to bribe him to delete it.
Initially arguing the bot was a security issue for him, Musk went on to probe Sweeney about how it worked — according to the teen, that is — and even offered him US$5000 to bin it completely. When Sweeney countered with US$50,000, negotiations ground to a stalemate.
Now Sweeney’s bot tracks celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg and Jay-Z as they (assumedly) fly to glamorous destinations to rest and recuperate from the sheer exhaustion that being insanely rich must cause.
It might have started as just another way we can ogle the lifestyles of the rich and famous amid our intensely celebrity-focused culture, but London is on fire amid record 40-degree temperatures while Australia’s east coast has been underwater twice this year, the first being the most expensive flood ever.
More than 100 million Americans have been given extreme heat warnings today as wildfires rage in 13 states, while Iraq has choked through nine sandstorms (lasting several days each) in the past eight weeks alone.
Private jets emit two tonnes of carbon dioxide in just one hour — that’s about how much CO2 a normal person emits in one year.
And private jets are far more ubiquitous than we might realise. Europe’s leading transport campaign group Transport & Environment found one in 10 flights leaving France in 2019 were private jets — and half of those travelled fewer than 500 kilometres.
Indeed private jets are twice as likely to be used for trips under 500km in Europe compared to commercial flights, even though aviation contributes 3.5% of all global emissions.
If the aviation sector was a nation, it would be among the top 10 global emitters.
And we’re seeing the result play out in real time. Australia’s state of the environment report — kept secret for seven months by then environment minister Sussan Ley, who may well be our acting prime minister in a few years — found Australia’s environment is suffering severe deterioration.
Minister for the Environment Tanya Plibersek described the findings as “shocking” and “a story of crisis and decline” — rising greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are degrading ecosystems and human societies in the present tense, it found.
At least 19 ecosystems are showing signs of collapse or near collapse.
“This report should act as a wake-up call to the damage we are doing to the world around us,” Andrew King, a senior lecturer in climate science at the University of Melbourne, told Al Jazeera. “We must decarbonise our economy and society as rapidly as possible to try and limit the environmental losses that we will experience as we keep warming the world.”
But what does one do? Turn the lights off? Recycle more? Use blankets instead of heaters? Catch fewer flights? The climate-change guilt and shame such a report causes among us little fish are somewhat mollified by the fact that 100 companies are to blame for 70% of the world’s emissions, but I digress.
And make no mistake: a private aircraft and a commercial aircraft do not have the same footprint. A private jet is between 5-14 times more polluting than your average airbus per person and a whopping 50 times more polluting than trains.
What’s worse is the lengths of the trips that Celebrity Jets reveals. This week Kardashian businesswoman Kylie Jenner flew a trip that took all of 11 minutes on her private jet, but she’s been known to take three-minute journeys. That emissions are at their highest during takeoff and landing makes this even more dismal.
The Kardashians are low-hanging fruit for criticism, but it’s by no means limited to the first family of reality TV. Overnight Steven Spielberg’s jet took a 48-minute flight, the equivalent distance of Sydney to Canberra. It used 1529 litres of fuel and spat four tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
So what do we do? Transport & Environment is calling for sweeping aviation laws that would give regulators the power to only allow the use of hydrogen or electric aircraft (powered with green hydrogen and electricity) for private jet flights under 1000km within Europe by 2030. But time is ticking.
Despite what the likes of Matt “coal is cool” Canavan and Peta “floods are normal” Credlin are bleating about, the science is settled — rapid-onset climate change is leading to more extreme natural disasters, speedy degradation of flora and fauna, overlapping crises in food production, clean water sources, climate refugees and more.
So why do we give the rich and famous a free pass to turbocharge the planet’s widespread devastation en route to Mykonos, while we shiver through a winter so cold some homes are below the WHO’s safe temperature?
It’s easy to get livid about the shocking waste and pollution emitted by these entitled celebrities, etc. But to the majority of the citizens in developing countries, we ‘ordinary’ people look just like that too.
That’s the point of mass tourism to developing countries – for a brief week the First World lumpen get to opportunity feel like the rich who grind them underheel at home.
Good article Emma.
I am an energy and emissions analyst with a website on these matters (see below)
One correction – the average Australian emits 12 t CO2/year from their personal consumption of goods travel nd energy (22 t from all sources)
What can we do? Estimate our own carbon footprint using a calculator such as:
https://cleanenergymodelling.com.au/ghg-energy-calc/
By doing these three big ticket things we can more than halve our emissions:
-Stop flying
-Leave your car in the garage – only use it if you have a full load or at least 2 passengers
-Stop eating meat of ruminants – cattle, sheep
We don’t have to turn our lights off (LED’s cause nest to zero emissions) or stop heating our houses.
Solar water heating and PV panels reduce our home emissions by more than half so this will make a big difference
Using a heat pump split system air conditioner for one room instead of gas or ducted for heating the whole house and electric blankets instead of heating bedrooms will also significantly reduce your carbon footprint.
Doing all these things does not reduce quality of life one iota. I know because I do it.
Thanks Ben, couldn’t agree more?
-that site is a great resource.
I really do find it hard to believe we are allowed to build houses in 2022 with traditional heating and cooling rather than heat pumps.
I wonder if at some point banks will take this running cost differential into account when providing mortgages; might smarten up some of the developers who are otherwise not incentivised.
Yep. We’re fuc*ed as a species and a planet if we don’t start a radical fix urgently. But we are collectively more fascinated by celebrity than the imminent and catastrophic destruction of our habitat.
Per capita emissions by Australians (as in other developed countries) is a lot more than 2 tonnes per annum of CO2. Our total raw primary energy is 7 kW per capita. If all of that were in the form of oil, we would be emitting 16 tonnes per annum of CO2 per person. Contribution by coal would certainly take that above 20 tonnes per annum per person. Let’s not kid ourselves that renewable energy could supply 7 kW on demand.
Perhaps you may have to wait a while from time to time – when the Labor plan is complete there certainly will be plenty of renewable energy available, and not limited by high prices as is currently the case.
Also could you please explain your figure of 7kW, how much per hour is that?.
Geoff Thomas says we only have to wait for Labor and then there will be plenty of renewable energy. However the kiddies already know that there will never be enough – they know what happens when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow – and the batteries go flat. That gap in power will always be supplied with fossil in Labor’s plans, no matter how long you wait.
Jeff also asks, what is this here newfangled unit, kilowatts? But again the kiddies already know you’re just pretending to be ignorant. They know what kilowatts are, schools worldwide have been teaching the international system of units (SI) since 1960.
Capitalism and reducing emissions do not go together. The world is geared to consume (not basic needs like food, etc) – businesses must make profits – in the rush to get as much profit as possible we are ceaselessly shown new variations of food, drink, snacks, sweets, clothing, sneakers, cosmetics, pet food products, cleaning products, gardening products etc. Make your own list and see how much energy is used for these unnecessary items. World wide production every second of the day.
And so many variations of the same basic item – eg breakfast foods! Plus plant milk – take up more shelf space than cows milk! All these businesses want is for us to buy their products.
I’m not denying plant milk is beneficial for allergies etc, but I thought good old goats milk was the best for allergies.
There’s just so many varieties it’s stupid to think all will be successful although if it’s a global corp it may stand the loss of sales.
Celebrity status confers utter selfishness and total narcissistic behaviour for many “stars” – I’m assuming the belief in their status precludes any social/true humanitarian actions. Apparently their lives are so precious and costly they need to go anywhere fastest way possible.