Last week, a 2019 video clip resurfaced showing climate envoy John Kerry’s attempt to reconcile his beliefs about climate change with his practice of flying around the world in private jets.
Asked whether his carbon-spewing private aircraft is an “environmental way to travel,” Kerry responded thus: “It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.”
This is quite rich. For one thing, Kerry was not traveling the world “to win this battle” or, to use the nonsensical expression popularized by Biden’s campaign, “defeat the climate crisis.” (One does not “defeat” a crisis.) Rather, he was in Iceland to receive an award in his personal capacity.
Kerry was not even a government official at that time, so there was no public-minded rationale for his use of a private jet. Commercial flights to Reykjavik were available in 2019 (they are even available now), carrying dozens or even hundreds of passengers at similar distances and thus emitting a small fraction of the amount of carbon dioxide per passenger.
Kerry, of course, carefully elided over this popular option in the video clip, in which he disingenuously reasoned, “I can’t sail across the ocean. I have to fly, meet with people, and get things done.” No wonder the phrase that has gotten the most attention was Kerry’s “somebody like me.” He’s so far above the commercial air travel experience that the global climate can be sacrificed to his ego.
The Left has decided that, as part of the long-term fight against global warming, the federal government must impose rules that sharply limit air travel in general. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s outline document for her $93 trillion Green New Deal went even further, envisioning the eventual elimination of air travel.
But those rules mustn’t apply to “somebody like” Kerry!
Kerry is not alone in thinking himself above the climate rules that he would impose on everyone else. Consider, for example, Ocasio-Cortez’s unnecessary air travel between Washington and New York City, Al Gore’s massive carbon footprint at the time he left politics and took up environmental activism, or Leonardo DiCaprio’s frequent private jet travel, supposedly to promote saving the climate he is personally destroying.
The truth is that the average person probably unwittingly does far less damage to the planet than many prominent environmental advocates. The situation bears an unfortunate similarity to the hypocritical California officials who have imposed and reimposed draconian coronavirus lockdowns on businesses, only to turn around and violate them by furtively attending parties and frequenting salons.
Like the coronavirus, climate change is real and harmful. But by the same token, there is no evidence that the ridiculous burdens that Kerry wants to impose on his countrymen will change the weather in the short or the long run. Already, fracking has done more to reduce emissions than all climate activism in U.S. history combined. Zero-emissions natural gas power is already here and economically competitive without massive subsidies. Nuclear fusion is probably not far behind.
In the meantime, a truly and sufficiently devoted adherent of climate alarmism (the belief, unsupported by science, that climate change will end the world soon unless we dismantle our economy within a decade or so) would fastidiously avoid everything from car travel to daily internet use. The fact that climate activists do not live like that is a testament to the fact that they themselves don’t quite believe their own rhetoric.
Here’s an easy climate prediction: Kerry and those “like him” will continue to behave like hypocrites even as the entire rationale for their alarmist movement vanishes.
