Although technology billionaires constantly make statements about ecological balance and their sensitivity to the environment, the international non-profit organization Oxfam states that the carbon emissions they cause in just 90 minutes are the same as the emission value caused by an average person during his lifetime.
Oxfam, which examines the luxury transportation (such as yachts, jets) and investment emissions of the world’s 50 richest billionaires, states that the results of this research clearly show that the luxurious lifestyles of the world’s rich people “feed inequality and hunger and threaten lives” across the world. .
Private jets threaten our planet
Private jets, one of the most visible luxuries of the ultra-rich, also stand out as the luxury uses that cause the most pollution. Oxfam, which was able to identify the private jets of 23 of the billionaires it examined in its report, found that they each made an average of 184 flights over a 12-month period and spent approximately 425 hours in the air. These jets cause an average of 2,074 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. This amount is equivalent to the carbon emissions of the average person living for 300 years, or of the global poorer 50 percent living for two millennia.
Two names that drew particular attention in Oxfam’s report were Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. While Musk’s two known private jets released 5,497 tons of carbon dioxide in a year, Bezos’ two jets released 2,908 tons of carbon dioxide. In particular, Musk has been receiving criticism for a while for using his private jet for extremely short flights instead of choosing more reasonable means of transportation.
As well as examining the jets and yachts of the wealthy, Oxfam also examined billionaires’ stakes in various companies and their officially reported carbon emissions. While on average forty percent of the investments of the 50 billionaires examined are in sectors that cause high pollution, such as oil, mining and transportation, there is almost no investment in sectors such as renewable energy.
Oxfam states that this carbon footprint, found by examining the investments of billionaires, indicates much larger impacts on a global scale.
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