“The problem is that the 26,000 aircraft and the individuals using them will say ‘We are just a small group. We are not relevant in terms of emissions.’ But everybody else will look at the small group and say, 'Look these are the super-emitters, if they are not relevant, how can we be relevant?”

Carbon pollution from private jets has soared in the past five years, with most of those small planes spewing more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in about two hours of flying than the average person does in about a year, a new study finds.

About a quarter million of the super wealthy — worth a total of $31 trillion — last year emitted 17.2 million tons (15.6 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide flying in private jets, according to Thursday’s study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. That’s about the same amount as the 67 million people who live in Tanzania

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    And it ain’t gonna change. As of this week, I’ve given up on my personal environmental conservation. Separating my recycling does nothing useful when it’s so far outweighed by this.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      24 hours ago

      Single-stream is great from an effort perspective, if you believe the lies, but much is just diverted to the landfill or plastic bundled up in bales for some magic future when it might be recyclable. As others mentioned though, aluminum (and glass) for the win.

    • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
      112·
      2 days ago

      Separating my recycling does nothing useful when it’s so far outweighed by this.

      Separating your recycling never did anything useful, that was a convenient lie we were told to sell us on plastics.

      • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
        41·
        1 day ago

        That isn’t even true. Just because plastic isn’t as recyclable as they claim doesn’t mean you should throw your cardboard, paper and metal into your garbage. Recycling isn’t just plastic, it’s also compost metal and cardboard and glass.

        Just to stop recycling because some rich wankers need to jet around the planet or people need to fly around the globe for instagram likes is just dumb. It’s not even hard work, it’s just a thing that you do. You can also shit in the sink, it goes in the same pipe, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

      • fishpen0@lemmy.world
        21·
        1 day ago

        Aluminum has a nearly 98% recycling rate. There is so much more to recycling than just plastic. Don’t fuck this up

        • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
          21·
          1 day ago

          I can not fuck it up as much as I want, and Bezos et al will fuck it up more than enough for everyone.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        41·
        2 days ago

        I don’t know, a well-stocked bunker and some armed AI security drones will let them ride things out for quite a while.

        • P1nkman@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 day ago

          Sounds like a fun existence. And when they exit, they will see that it was not worth it and regret their decisions. Hahahahah, that was a joke, they have no empathy for their fellow human beings - they’ll regret not gathering more power/money.