CELEBRITY JET FLIGHTS GENERATE BACKLASH

In July 2022, as much of the Global North was facing record Summer temperatures, Kylie Jenner posted a now-deleted picture on Instagram.

It showed her and rapper Travis Scott standing in front of two private jets with the caption, “You wanna take mine or yours?”

The post generated a backlash. On social media, many pointed out that Jenner often used her jet for journeys of 15 minutes or less.

People knew this, thanks to the celebrity jet tracker accounts on Twitter (these were subsequently suspended after Elon Musk bought the network, given that his jet was tracked.)

Following on from Jenner’s July 2022 flight, TikTok user eryn810 posted a viral video showing that many celebrities were burning the equivalent in carbon in a single flight that the average American does in a year.

And it’s not only in the US that celebrity jet users have been facing questions. For example, Christian Galtier, coach of French football/soccer club Paris St Germain and the team’s star striker Kylian Mbappe came under fire in September for laughing when asked in a press conference about their private jet use.

Then, private jet-related criticism has extended to business leaders. This includes Bill Gates, who invests in decarbonisation technologies through his Breakthrough Energies fund.

This comes after a Seattle High School student used publicly available data to show that Bill Gates took 392 private jet flights in 2022, emitting over 3000 tonnes of carbon (Gates’s response was that he buys carbon capture credits via direct air capture company Climeworks.)

Other prolific private jet users identified in the ‘Climate Jets’ table include the Murdoch family (4000+ tonnes of carbon), Mike Bloomberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and rapper Pitbull.

With that mood music in place, climate change groups have been zeroing in on the business aviation sector.

Source: climatejets.org