I’d like to share a quote with you from Andreas Malm’s ‘How to blow up a pipeline’, p.86:
If you want to emit as much CO2 as possible, there is no faster way than to go on a flying binge. That also comes close to the definition of being rich today. One single flight from London to Edinburgh emits more CO2 than the average Somalian does in a year; from London to New York, more than the Nigerian and the Nepalese; from London to Perth, more than the Peruvian and the Egyptian, the Kenyan and the Indian. There are fifty-six countries in the world with annual per capita emissions lower than the emissions from one individual flying once between London and New York. These figures work on conservative estimates of the impact of aviation. Who spews this fire from the skies? Even in such a flying-prone country as England, 1 per cent of residents took a fifth of all overseas flights in 2018; 10 per cent took half and 48 per cent none. But the super-rich prefer their very own planes, or renting one from Warren Buffett, whose fleet of luxury dragons cruise the skies to predictable effect. The private jets operating in the US alone generate as much CO2 as half of Burundi does in a year.