“As for celebrities, they need to set a positive example and ditch the planes. “Aviation decarbonization is largely all talk and little substance in the US,” said Pavlenko. This target, however, is voluntary and there has been no significant shift by the industry towards lessening its climate impact. Major US airlines have announced climate plans that include commitments to ramp up the use of low-emission sustainable aviation fuels (or SAFs), such as cooking oil or hydrogen, with Joe Biden’s administration last year unveiling a goal of a 20% cut in aviation emissions by 2030. Aviation emissions are growing exponentially year over year and private jet pollution is growing more than general aviation.” “These short flights have emissions that are small in relative terms but per person they are staggering. “There are plenty of alternatives to private jets and wanting to avoid traveling with the hoi polloi isn’t a good enough reason for excessive pollution,” said Nikita Pavlenko, fuels team lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation. The frequent use of aviation is the domain of the world’s wealthy, with just 1% of the global population responsible for half of the emissions associated with flying. Short trips using private jets are not solely an American phenomenon in 2019, one tenth of all flights departing France were private jets, with half traveling less than 500km. But it also includes many others, as the US constitutes the bulk of the wealthy elite that have the luxury of flying.”Įmissions from private jets flown in the US have surged since the 1990s and will balloon further as larger and more polluting aircraft come onto the market. “The problem starts at the top with Kylie Jenner and other celebrities with private jets, which have a much larger impact than commercial aircraft on a per passenger basis. “These startlingly short flights show the immense impact of the wealthy in overall aviation emissions,” said Scott Hochberg, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. However, private aircraft still emit more than 33m tonnes of greenhouse gases, more than the country of Denmark, and because they carry so few people they are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes, per passenger, and 50 times more polluting than trains, researchers have found. Private jets are responsible for around 4% of all aviation emissions, according to a 2016 study, with the airline industry keen to point out that flying in general comprises just a small fraction of the overall sources of planet-heating gases. “With Elon he’s just trying to be as quick as possible and efficient for work, but someone like Kim Kardashian (who has taken long and short private jet flights) is posting ‘Kim Air’ and flexing and all that,” he said. In May, Musk took a 28-minute flight in his jet between Houston and Austin, Texas, but Sweeney believes he should be judged differently for this. Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, has a similar account that just tracks the private jet of Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire head of Tesla. “I’m not surprised people are upset, they are right to be mad at this,” said Jack Sweeney, creator of the Celebrity Jets account, which uses data from a company that tracks aircraft transponders. Table showing a selection of short flights by celebrity-owned planes. Many of these brief flights are to “park” an aircraft at a convenient or less expensive location, or are part of a longer, two-part journey, but many appear to have an unclear rationale, such as the decision of Floyd Mayweather, the boxer, to fly 14 minutes from Las Vegas to nearby Henderson, then to fly 10 minutes back on Sunday. The trip would have taken Jenner about 40 minutes in a car, causing just a fraction of the emissions.īut Jenner – who took an even shorter flight, lasting just nine minutes, between the same two locations in June – is far from the only celebrity to make short hops using private aircraft rather than driving or using public transport.Ī review of the Celebrity Jets tracking account shows that just in the past month, the rapper Drake took an 18-minute flight from Hamilton, Ontario to Toronto Kenny Chesney, the country music singer, was in the air for just 20 minutes between Akron, Ohio and Pittsburgh and the actor Mark Wahlberg took a 23-minute flight from Dublin to County Clare in Ireland, among other short trips. It’s estimated that her 17-minute jaunt would’ve resulted in a ton of carbon dioxide emissions, which, while in itself not a huge amount, is about a quarter of the total annual carbon footprint of the average person globally. She was subsequently attacked by Twitter users for her “absolute disregard for the planet” and for being a “full time climate criminal”. Map of Kylie Jenner’s flight on July 12, two legs between Thermal and Camarillo, California.
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