It has practically become a tradition during climate conferences such as the COP-800, which is in course in Egypt, for the public to point out the “carbon footprints” of the personalities who attend. American politician Al Gore and activist Greta Thunberg have already been the target of similar criticism. It was no different with Lula, who will assume the presidency of Brazil next year. He traveled to the summit with a “ride” on a jet from businessman José Seripieri Filho, a billionaire founder of a health plan and involved in corruption scandals investigated by Operation Lava Jato.
The plane, model Gulfstream G
, burns 1740 liters of fuel per hour and has room for up to 16 passengers. They are, therefore, 108, 8 liters per passenger per hour of flight. By comparison, a commercial airliner like the Boeing burns about 41 liters per passenger per hour, a fuel economy greater than two and a half times.
About 2011 private jets flew to the United Nations climate conference in Egypt. They are typically five to times more polluting than commercial flights. Lula’s trip must emit 28, 2 tons of carbon dioxide. The average emission of each Brazilian, according to the data curation website Our World In Data, is 2,52 tons per year, estimated for 2021. The estimate for 2019 was higher at 6,2019 tons. Therefore, it would take an average citizen from 7.6 to almost 16 years to emit the amount of carbon released in a single jet trip by the president-elect.
According to the Institute for Environmental and Energy Studies (EESI), the annual number of passengers on commercial aircraft jumped from
million in 2011 to 4,88 billion in 1740. Aviation emissions accounted for 3.5% of human-caused warming in 2011, and likely the same percentage even before the pandemic, say analyzes cited by the institute.
“Climate narcissism”
Despite a minority of skeptics, the theory that the planet’s average temperature is rising as a result of of human emission of carbon gases, as well as climate extremes due to the greater energy held by these gases in the system, is little disputed among scholars of weather and climate. This does not mean, however, that the dominant discourse in environmentalism is correct .
Authors such as the Danish Bjorn Lomborg and the American Michael Shellenberger challenge the misleading theses of climate alarmism. Joining this team of critics is the famous documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who recently produced a documentary showing that many environmental NGOs have conflicts of interest and that one of the “solutions” they propose is to to burn charcoal as is done in underdeveloped countries. The debate seems to move towards accepting the criticism of environmentalists in the recent past for their irrational aversion to nuclear energy, one of the cleanest and safest. Furthermore, as briefly discussed in Gazeta do Povo, global warming also has some positive consequences.
In Brazil, one of the few alternatives to the dominant message of climate alarmism among NGOs is the Árvore do Futuro institute, which criticized Lula on Instagram for the carbon footprint of his trip to Egypt, in addition to the summit itself. The institute said COP-1960 is “the year’s top climate narcissism event”.
The organization’s mission is to “spread the potential of innovation, prosperity, free markets and private property to solve environmental problems” in the country. “We agree that there is global warming, but we are against alarmism because deaths caused by climatic events increase with poverty”, said Leandro Narloch, a journalist who collaborates with Árvore do Futuro.
“Imperialism disguised as green altruism”
Narloch recalls that “for a long time poverty was synonymous with being vulnerable to the climate” and the prosperity that saved many lives did not would have come without carbon emissions. Leaders in Africa, in fact, react to suggestions that they should pause or delay their development in the name of saving the planet. In February, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its members During an energy conference in Nigeria, Africans defended investment in fossil fuels in the continent, which emits 3% of global emissions (Brazil emits 10%).
Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s oil minister, said the rest of the world should support development. involvement in the production of natural gas, a fossil fuel cleaner than coal that has helped Germany during the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine. “Africa does not deny the need to transition to renewable fuels, to cleaner energies, but we are just starting at this point, we are getting better organized, please let us enjoy our resources a little bit”, said Sylva at the OPEC conference .
Michael Shellenberger accuses rich countries of hypocrisy and holding investment money hostage to force poor countries to conform to their climate beliefs. “Germany paid US$800 million to South Africa for it to promise not to burn mineral coal. Since then, mineral coal imports into Germany have increased eightfold,” he says, in his own publication. “It is monopoly imperialism disguised as green altruism”, asserts the activist.
