“Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Thank you.”
These are words pampered members of the globalist elites never hear. Why? Because they are increasingly shunning scheduled commercial airline travel in favor of private jets and driving up deadly carbon emissions in the process.
Despite being owned by just 0.003 per cent of the population, research shows private jets of the rich make an “outsized” contribution to air pollution.
Brad Pitt and his girlfriend Ines De Ramon landing in Liège with a private jet pictured on July 23, 2024 in Liège, Belgium, 23/07/2024 ( Gianni Barbieux / Photonews ) via Getty Images)
Scientists from Linnaeus University in Sweden have released a new study showing private jets produced 15.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2023, up 46 percent from 2019 and their use shows no sign of abating.
The most frequent fliers each churned out 2,400 tonnes of emissions in 2023 – more than 500 times as much as the average individual, the Guardian reports. It further stated:
Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed.
The assessment tracked more than 25,000 private jets and almost 19m flights between 2019 and 2023. It found almost half the jets travelled less than 500km and 900,000 were used “like taxis” for trips of less than 50km. Many flights were for holidays, arriving in sunny locations in the summertime. The Fifa World Cup in Qatar in 2022 attracted more than 1,800 private flights.
Private flights, used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, are the most polluting form of transport. The researchers found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO2 emissions in an hour than the average person did in a year.
Who are the greatest offenders?
The U.S. dominated private jet travel, representing 69 percent of flights, and Canada, the UK and Australia were all in the top 10. A private jet takes off every six minutes in the UK.
The total emissions from private jet flights in 2023 were more than 15m tonnes, more than the 60 million people of Tanzania emitted, the report sets out.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres disembarks from a private jet ahead of Egypt’s Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, on landing at Egypt’s al-Arish Airport, near the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip on March 23, 2024. (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)
File/Ben Affleck is seen on September 01, 2017 in Los Angeles, California, boarding a private jet. BG004/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Prof Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the research, said: “The wealthy are a very small share of the population but are increasing their emissions very quickly and by very large levels of magnitude.” He added: “The growth in global emissions that we are experiencing at this point in time is coming from the top.”
The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, took data from the ADS-B Exchange platform, which records the signals sent once a minute by transponders on every plane, recording its position and altitude.
This huge dataset – 1.8 terabytes – was then filtered for the 72 plane models marketed by their manufacturers as “business jets”. The emissions figures are most likely an underestimate, as smaller planes and emissions from taxiing on the ground were not included.
The analysis found the number of private jets increased by 28 percent and the distance flown jumped by 53 percent between 2019 and 2023. Fewer than a third of the flights were longer than 600 miles and almost 900,000 flights were less than 30 miles.
“We know some people use them as taxis, really,” Gössling said. “If it’s just 50km, you could definitely do that by car.”
Outside the US and Europe, Brazil, the Middle East and the Caribbean are private jet hotspots.
