A man’s lonely fight to ban private jets
vice.com
vice.com
The odd thing is the very people who are trying to get the world to minimize hydrocarbon use are some of the people who most often use private jets --the Davos set and Hollywood crowd, among others. Can't they for the planet, travel economy on regular airlines? This tonedeafness can turn people off.
Sure it was a stunt, but it was a good one.
And surely she does not take a tallship every time she crosses expanses of water, if she did, then, I'd buy in.
that's more of an artifact of what "fuel taxes" represent. For roads at least they're not typically taxed as some sort of sin/environment tax, they're taxed as a way to finance road maintenance. Obviously that does not apply to airplanes. I'm not sure about other "better forms of transportation" (trains? boats?) have fuel taxes.
For an example of my claim look at [0] which started as protest from rural France for an environmental fuel tax.
If what you want is cheaper food, why don't you subsidize food production directly? Or give money to people to buy food, which has the advantage of being something you can target directly to poorer people.
Subsidizing fuel used in the production of food leads farmers to use more polluting options than they would otherwise, since fuel is artificially cheap.
Foods follow a long chain with many hands; farm -> processor -> factories -> distributors -> retail; you want low retail prices and farm to be economically sustainable, moreover sometimes the link in the chain are the same entity sometime they are distinct companies.
You could keep track of prices along the chain (we already do with VAT) and reimburse expenses along the chain to allow farms to sell at higher price without it affecting the final buyer.
Or you could just lower the operating cost of farms by taking the major expenses* and subsidizing them.
The first also is highly vulnerable to exploitation since many farms sell to huge corporations that can outplay them in the regulation game.
* Which I guess are wages, taxes, fuel, and material (food/fertilizer).
And it’s strange I pay more of this “CO2 tax” when filling up my car to drive 10h, perhaps $50 in CO2 tax alone, than all 100 of us in the cabin of a 737 pay together when taking one hour flight the same distance.
My my car tax ($1.5k/yr regardless of distance driven) sounds more like a road maintenance fee collection but also not earmarked for any purpose. I suspect this latter tax will need to skyrocket for EVs once fuel doesn’t bring in enough road maintenance money.
A bus is an example of a “better” method of transportation that uses taxed fuel and has to compete with planes flying on tax free fuel.
It's interesting that you make that comparison. Inverness to London fits that definition and from the last time I checked this,it's about 0.12 Tonnes of CO2 per seat to fly that distance, and roughly the same (actually slightly more) to drive the distance. For long distances like that, particularly if you're travelling in a small group, you're often better off flying over driving.
But regardless the point still stands: why is that 0.12 ton CO2 tax exempt in the plane but not in the car?
https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/tool/defini...
Just the US+EU would be a big chunk.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-09/private-j...
With that said it seems that the only real solution would be to convince these countries to adopt greener energy (which is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons) which leads me to ask: is anything else really making a difference?
We can talk about adopting plant based diets, talk about banning private jets and mandating electric cars, there's lot of things that we can do, but the question is any of that even going to matter when the vast majority of global warming is contributed to by other nations that we have no control over.
Furthermore I think we have to weigh our sacrifices against the impact. If were going to ban something like private jets, there better be a real impact. What I see now though is, if we ban private jets for example, we will bear the cost of that ban without any of the associated green benefits because again, the developing nations with their coal plants are pumping out exponentially more greenhouse gasses than any private jet would.
My conclusion is rather cynical but I don't see why we should be making sacrifices, when none of those sacrifices lead to quantifiable results. And what I particularly don't like now is that we seem to be making policy not on what will make a quantifiable difference in climate, but rather what will make us feel like we're making an impact. It's really a more broad issue than that, we as a society seem to have ceased trying to actually solve problems, rather we "solve" them by doing something that makes us feel good, regardless of whether than thing actually has any real impact.
First, this is true, but also misleading.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?most_rec...
China is not even close to a top polluter per capita, while Canada and US are top there. That means China sustains a larger population with a comparatively smaller impact. Not looking at this metric per capita shows the implicit bias of valuing some citizens needs more than others, and refusal to accept this as a “my” problem but rather “their” problem, which is a source of east-west / north-south tension.
Second, in the particular example of China, the pollution is caused by offshoring manufacturing of goods that will be consumed by the top polluters per capita themselves. If we factored in the footprint of this consumption, instead of accounting it all on China’s budget, it would make the numbers even worse for developed nations.
We’re are going head first into a environmental crisis, and a severe reduction in consumption, which should be a top priority, is not considered at all. It’s a taboo topic, developed nations citizens will not accept a reduction in living standards, and the whole modern economy depends on increasing consumption and externalization of environmental costs.
I dont even think it is true if you ignore population.
If you add up the developed and developing countries, I think the developed countries still emit more.
To anyone reasonably familiar with China, this feels like either propaganda or extreme naivete. First off that number is probably based on official stats, and those were probably based on a sample consisting of a model village or two.
Second, the official pollution stats for China have no more credibility than US inflation statistics from any area (Nixon, Carter, Biden, etc.). And finally, just ask anyone in the provinces where industrial waste is generated assuming you didn't figure it out an hour before your train arrived. They'll give you a very different that sheds a light on your "comparatively smaller impact" notion.
Source: Investor in China, most family is in China, knowledge of internal politics from staff
But ok, let's ignore China. We don't need to focus on China to support the argument that blaming pollution on developing nations is disingenuous.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
Pollution per capita paints a different picture from the common narrative: there's still an order of magnitude difference between so called developed nations and others, and even between developed nations the gap is large – the avg. US citizen still pollutes 3x more than a Spanish citizen.
Supporting the narrative that developing nations are polluting the world, while simultaneously not rethinking your consumption habits is a double-standard.
do you have some better methodology to point to?
So yeah, there are arguments to be made from all sides. I am not in anyway trying to say that India/China should not do their part but American argument for not doing their part is mostly a political talking point.
Some more context and analysis here - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/cop26-tackling-c...
even if the USA is responsible for indias pollution, at the end of the day it is still india that needs to reduce their pollution.
EDIT: people seem to misunderstand what i am trying to say.
i am not saying that the USA does not pollute. nor am i claiming that india pollutes more than the USA. all i am saying is that pollution that happens in india needs to be stopped in india, and pollution that happens in the USA needs to be stopped in the USA. the question is not who is responsible, the question is, who is in the position to implement a change. the USA can reduce their own pollution, but they can't stop pollution in india without indias cooperation. at best they can stop investments that cause pollution, and make other investments that help india reduce pollution. or they can stop importing products whose creation increases pollution. but either way india needs to contribute to that effort by making laws that enable a reduction of pollution in their country. the USA can't do that for them.
however, you just made me realize that there is something that outsourcing countries possibly can do too. namely, i believe they can influence or even stop investments from their country that cause pollution elsewhere.
This is a misunderstanding of the basic numbers. Developed nations generally have much higher C02 emissions per capita, and often have higher CO2 emission per country.
The top 3 contributors by country are:
China, 7 tons/ capita & 10 Billion tons/yr USA, 16 tons/capita & 5 billion tons/yr India 2 tons/capita & 1.6 Billion tons/yr
The average American emits 2x the co2 as someone in China, and 8x someone in India.
It is hard to convince China & India to adopt greener energy when they are emitting far less CO2 per person.
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
Sources are numerous but heres the first few I found :
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/govt-nod-to-stronger...
https://www.csis.org/east-green-chinas-global-leadership-ren...
Currently, the average Indian citizen emits half the greenhouse gas of the global per capita average. To argue that they deserve less than their share is blatent discrimination.
Meanwhile, China has invested more than double what the US invested into renewable energy sources over the past decade, and more than all of Europe combined. And this is all while the average Chinese citizen emits 10 metric tons less of greenhouse gasses than the average American.
But all you hear in the west is how the bad coal plants in India and China are causing global warming when China already has 1 million more GWh of renewable energy than the US.
The fact is western lifestyles are not sustainable, especially American lifestyles.
Sources: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/29752/...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenho...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewab...
First off, it literally would make a difference in the the absolute volume. 7 tons/person is objectively less than 15tons/person.
IF your point is simply that the US can't stop climate change all by itself, then of course you are correct.
Climate change is not a binary situation. it can be more or less extreme.
Do you throw your trash on the street just because someone else did? Less trash is obviously better than more trash.
It's not about who's most or least guilty of this but about how we can collectively stop burning fossil fuel ASAP. It's not about fairness, sacrifices, or feeling good about things but just about discouraging known bad things (like burning fossil fuel) collectively and stimulating things that actually achieve something and move the needle.
I think when it comes to general aviation, a strong financial incentive to do that in a more fuel efficient way would have some impact. Just look at what incentive programs are doing for electrical vehicles. Electrical planes are not far behind and there are a few companies in this space with working products that could probably benefit from a little help. It's not that different.
I actually am one of those people that would take flying lessons if it was a little cheaper. Seems like a really fun thing to do. Do I need to fly. Nope, this would be purely for my own entertainment. It's definitely bad for the environment, and there is absolutely no need for gallons of fuel to be burned every hour I'd be flying. Fuel prices and the cost of flying are definitely helping me stay on the ground. I'd love to have a cheaper, electrical, option. I don't see that that would be less fun and it would be less harmful.
A skilled and lucky glider pilot can make that flight last for hours - my husband's personal best is something on the order of 8 hours and 800km.
This sport requires a lot of help on the ground, so it's very social and physically active.
Well, those countries also have huge masses of people, and they are already well below the per capita emissions in the EU, and far below the USA per capita emissions.
So, one thing we may want to help with is finding ways to make it possible to have a good quality of life without such a huge impact on the environment - and then, perhaps, export these technologies to China or India etc.
This has actually been untrue for almost a decade. China has had higher per-capita emissions than the EU since 2013, and is still climbing, while the EU's is declining.
The US is still 2x china, but has been declining for 50 years, and is currently declining drastically.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
Also, China is manufacturing much of what the EU and USA are buying, so a lot of those emissions are outsourced to China. It will be interesting to see how these numbers evolve as the EU and USA are starting to think about bringing manufacturing back home...
Note also that China is still just below Germany - probably because of manufacturing.
No, it wouldn't seem. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
Personally, I think the other countries are right to be skeptical when we (USA) tell them they need to reduce emissions. We could easily reduce our own emissions, using current technology that already exists, but we just don't want to - we want to live our current lifestyle and have others do the hard work and sacrifice. Not to mention we look like giant hypocrits after advancing our economy without regard to the environment for 200 years and suddenly are demanding everybody else take the extra care that we didn't.
Kylie Jenner from the article doesn't want to drive, the same way most people don't want to bike to work or take a bus. Most Americans could, they just don't want to.
I've basically given up hope of climate change being avoided. It's classic game theory. We're better off cooperating, but in practice we're all personally better off if we don't.
So let's push it even further, looking for solutions.
1/Ban coal, petrol and gas power plants in the western countries as soon as possible, pushing for fission and renewable+storage, whichever is faster and can give us the most GWh per $ (spoiler: it's fission). Fusion is too far off and renewable+storage are not ready, too expensive and demand too much land and materials to work at scale, over seasons.
2/Start to put import tax on products from carbon-emitting countries, in proportion to the carbon they emit per GDP $.
That's it, solution found! Yeah!
Of course it's not going to fly because politics and status quo and existing interests.
Until climate change stings enough that people would bear the cost.
Or society collapse (but I doubt it at this point).
That being said, even west has a lot to lose. Right now where I live its 38 with high humidity, which is a number I don't recall, ever, in past 12 years. You go to alpine glaciers and they are melting right in front of your eyes this summer, big holes in it, drop in thickness 10-30m compared to year ago, rivers flowing on it and many ascents of the mountains are outright forbidden. Old folks die like flies in these situations.
- makes the West less dependent on energy imports which mostly come from hostile or potentially hostile countries, that use the money received mainly to subvert and undermine the West itself
- develop the technology to the point it will become cheaper than fossils (which is already achieved in some areas and is probably less than 10 years away from becoming the case in all of them), after which even the poorest countries will adopt them, just because it will be saving money
Shift to now, the developed world has offset quite a significant bit of the per-capita emissions by purchasing carbon credits from the developing world in the name of helping them grow, or simply shifting expensive manufacturing to these countries where it gets counted as their emissions and their problem.
So, what do we do? First, simplify the accounting so that there is a very clear and direct overview. Today, you have billionaires flying around in jets, but still not showing up as large scale emitters since they can afford enough credits to look at it as a minor inconveniencing tax.
Secondly, we need to make green energy affordable (just the way the fossils were dirt cheap for the developed world) for these countries by using economies of scale - deploy green energy generation in the developed world which would make it cheaper. Where does better accounting come in? When your manufacturing based emissions count as yours and not the developing world's you will have an incentive to pay more to also offset the emissions, instead of just shifting physical manufacturing.
I do agree that small scale individual sacrifices are mostly useless, as there's just little efficiency in doing smaller things than making huge changes on a more scalable level. You could give up flying for an entire year, but if you only fly 10 times a year, that's still less than a billionaire not flying private just once.
We need more accountability. We have the technology, the solutions, but we lack in accountability.
Apparently, the 5 countries that produce the most CO₂ are, in order:
1. China
2. The United States
3. India
4. Russia
5. Japan
E.g. those little florescent light bulbs? Worse for the environment than incandescent, because the environmental overhead of production and waste management outweighs the benefits of the greater efficiency.
That doesn't mean that we should keep using incandescent bulbs. They are ridiculously inefficient (for one thing they put out much more heat than light. They are technically heaters that emit light as a side-effect.) It measn we have to think a little more deeply and clearly about what we're doing.
We're going to have to make some major changes if we're going to avoid disaster, and "we" here means all of us.
Arguably, the more people who are comfortable making sacrifices, the more politically safe it is to pass impactful policy (on any issue but especially those that impact the future collective more than the current individuals).
I do feel your cynicism though. For me, it’s the thought that any promising solution must survive culture wars or align with the “free” market, neither of which have any consistency or urgency in 2022.
Germany has 3% of coal usage and 1% of the population
China is certainly the biggest at 51% coal and 18% population though. India per capita usage is lower but total is 11% of coal
Coal usage is also going to spike in Europe due to the gas shortages in the near term
I feel like part of the point of the "Ban Private Jets" movement is that the "sacrifices" and "cost" side of the equation are pretty dang low (particularly for the vast majority of folks that cannot fly private). Even for those that can fly private, the point is that other valid alternatives exist.
Banning private jets makes even more sense to me since it seems reasonably simple to regulate and enforce (given the already strict regulations around aircraft). The super-rich can always find a loophole, but this seems like an area where regulating the supply stands a good chance of driving the demand towards more climate-friendly options...
Sure, you could make 6 site visits across a week and a half using commercial airlines, or accept a four-shift shutdown because of a parts supply issue while the parts are trucked in.
To me, those aren’t really “valid alternatives” in the most meaningful sense of that phrase.
And for parts maybe this supply chain crunch have proven that we should stock more stuff locally... So replacement would be ready near enough.
Hell, you could even still allow hobbyists where the owner is required to be the pilot and that would still solve the primary problem
These parts are being flown on old, ugly Lear jets right now. Those are private jets.
Jeff Bezos would have to wait in line at the airport.
Also, isn’t the US still the biggest single contributor to greenhouse gasses?
My personal conclusion is that any "solution" which significantly limits either a) economic growth, b) national security, and/or c) personal freedoms and choice is doomed to fail. Rather, the only practicable solutions will be technological (as throughout history has always been the case).
Banning leaded fuels or stuff harmful to the Ozone layer weren't technical solutions, and they worked, even if they restricted personal freedoms and choice, and limited economic growth through spending money on things that didn't result on growth.
I think these examples do point to something important: the funding and incentivizing of R&D and tech.
Someone eating meat 3 meals a day and flying in a private jet, is using thousands of times over this level. The average person in a developing nation is using a fraction of this. Why should they stop emitting their fraction, when the jet setter uses their thousands over budget.
Stopping private jets is a tiny tiny tiny sacrifice for people. I for one have never used one, neither has anyone I know. We can safely ban them and only a few people will feel any impact, and it will be a pretty minor one, much less than thousands and thousands of people not having lighting or refrigeration.
I'm pretty sure coaches are a pretty popular form of transport as well.
what happens is the "jet fuel tax" goes into general government revenue. Politicians seeking re-election use said money to create new programs instead and effectively "buy votes" with your own money.
Can you provide an example of this ever working? I can give you several of it being an absolute failure and having no impact.
In Canada we have "sin" taxes (Alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline).
- Smoking has declined, but more because of the negative marketing (ugly pictures on a pack of smokes). It is also less "socially acceptable" and so young people dont pick up the habit.
- Alcohol - Slight downtrend, but sales are still very strong https://www.statista.com/topics/2998/alcohol-consumption-in-...
- Gas https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=231000.... Covid caused a decline, but it will trend back up.
These things don't happen on their own.
Canaday's Tobacco Strategy, presumably funded with money that has to come from somewhere (e.g. sin taxes): https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications...
I think this is quite unreasonable, because ordinary jets are like carpooling. If anything, it's they who should have the exception.
Humans go for symbolism though and hate hypocrites. Banning private jets has a delicious reveng-y feeling against the sanctimonious super-rich lecturing us about reducing our footprint - anyone who's flown commercial knows exactly how much it would hurt them.
I'm against the ban because it's pointless, and because the GA sector isn't minuscule so there are a lot of jobs at risk, and because once they ban private jets they'll come for my powerboat. Better I think to just suck some more out of their bloated wallets to cover the externalities. Earmarked Jet-A taxes, for example. Mandatory offsetting.
For short trips one possibility may eventually be EVTol aircraft using renewable energy. Those are evolving weekly and making steady progress. Some commercial airlines are already buying them and planning to use them to get people to/from the airport. One advantage these will have over private jets is the ability to land on private helipads. These only have a tiny fraction of the range of a private jet however and also do not have the same speed rating and will only fill a tiny fraction of the business needs.
Now if you're starting from there and with the response "well they won't" then your plan is an answer to the question "how can we make them?" but I don't think it's a particularly effective one compared to some others that it's easy to imagine.
No, the most reasonable solution is for everyone to be responsible for their own pollution. If you generate 15 tons of co2, you need to either eliminate those emissions or find some way of offsetting them. Who cares if you're a global jet setter generating hundreds of tons of co2, if you're properly sequestering them? "Banning private jets" is how we go from something reasonable (ie. "you shouldn't be able to damage a shared resource") to moralizing (ie. "you should be prevented from doing something, even though it's not harming others").
This is not to say that banning private jets is the answer, but I think the actual solution (if we get to one) will have to be a messy hodgepodge of approaches.
"Sequestering" carbon is, right now, complete science fiction. Nobody can actually do it. The most that can be done is paying to maybe prevent other people from emitting -- but the emissions always go up. So if one day proper carbon capture technologies exist, this argument can be made. Right now, it can't.
They can.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/these-companies-are-sucking-...
Which makes me very suspicious that the biggest investors are always oil companies, as though they can burn all the fuel they extract from the ground and also capture all the carbon it emits. Which is not possible, but maybe they hope that with enough sleight of hand nobody will notice.
Is this specific enough for you? It seems to avoid all the pitfalls you mentioned.
I think you are incorrect. 2 issues with this make it less reasonable than other alternatives.
1. Traditionally, costs are externalized to lower economic tiers (corporate socialism), in capitalistic countries. The wealthy charter isn't responsible for the Carbon, because they aren't producing it. It's not their plane. The cost might be shared across the staff (possibly + passengers) or the organization funding it, etc. There are a multitude of easily accessible avoidance tactics.
2. Politically, this is a non-starter for the masses during economic downturns and a 50/50 during economic upswings. The tyranny of the masses would rather a percentage of higher economic tier members take on costs than themselves.
These forces are a large part of why the movement for carbon neutrality has only been promoted (mostly voluntarily!) by big corporate PR announcements. Granted, mostly these are accounting tricks rather than true carbon sequestering, which is needed.
There are likely a small number of celebrities that use these aircraft to avoid sitting with us plebs and for status but the vast majority of them are use for business purposes that can not be replaced by commercial airlines in a manor that business folks would consider acceptable. Most of these people have legal teams that would battle any action taken by the government and in the end we would just waste vast amounts of taxpayer funds. That may sound defeatist but we have all witnessed the legal fallout of smaller changes.
another example: there was a piece done on a doctor that bought a light jet for his practice. don't remember the specifics but i remember thinking that his use case made a lot of sense
He's right but, unfortunately, this is one of the best jokes i ever heard. The most privileged people are also the most greedy.
The stuff 99% of world population successfully live without. After this we can ask regular people to maybe trade for more efficient cars, houses and so on. Maybe consider impacts of holidays.
> 1. Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly.
> 2. (Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms to one's position and privileges with which one has been born, bestowed and/or has earned.
(yes this is frequently brought up here on hn...)
If someone still wants to have a private jet they can but must pay the full costs of it instead of offloading the pollution cost on society.
A lot of the EU bans means if you're designing some kind of e.g. medical life-saving device of which there will be a few dozen units produced total, you can't do a whole bunch of things designed to make consumer devices better. The laws are on the surface reasonable, but they fail in corner cases.
Corner cases sometimes go to be important. Housing in the US is a big one. Building codes don't allow experimentation.
Charge me a grand for using lead, the wrong connector, or whatever, but please don't ban me.
For example, if you fly commercial BOS-LAX for $500 this means your flight costs something like $200 in carbon removal, while if you're in a large private jet emitting 150x you'd need to pay more like $30k.
Apparently, Vice don't get that private jets are also used to get someone into a random location in a shortest time possible. There's a demand, but no substitute for that.
[1]: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-gr...
To be quite frank, this is a very childish way of viewing the world. I get that media companies like Vice portray things in this way because it's an easy way to get views, and therefore makes for a headline that's an easy way to get upvotes.
We should aim to be better than this.
The right answer is to tax it. The 'business class ticket' alternative given in the article is not very realistic.
I believe most private jet travel is for business, and it means people can fly directly between locations, at whatever time is convenient, which might be difficult or highly inconvenient otherwise. And exchanging the hell that is airports and airport security for a dedicated private jet terminal is surely worth paying for if you travel frequently.
Litmus test: if cost was not a factor, wouldn't you prefer to travel via private jet?
Tells me that we're still hurting for better mobility in this world.
Climate wise that cost was amortised from metals consumption by the developed world.
If I'm going to consume vast quantities of resources then I do like to see benefits flow to as many others as possible.
Now that I'm in a rural area I see large quantities of fuel consumed by tractors to put grain into the mouths of millions.
Shorter ones, again, if cost was not a factor, I'd prefer high-speed rail or supersonic Hyperloop stations next to my origin and destination.
Hanging on by a thread
I don't believe forcing CEOs and celebrities to go through the same process as us proles will result in any meaningful change.
Not really involving political pressure to an unelected executive branch entrepreneur
Hacker news is a cesspool when it comes to climate change.
Politicians.
It's tough flying back and forth to your home state almost every week and maybe not seeing your family very much, and often they tell the airlines in advance to reserve seats on more than one flight to ensure they make it home. This talks about how it's not as luxurious as it might sound:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/11/21/members-of-congress...
There is a lot of info online about the travel allowances members of Congress in the USA have:
https://liveandletsfly.com/politicians-first-class/
I didn't know it was a recent change that began allowing Senators to use their allowance to book private:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/senate-rule-change-c...
When there is a general expectation that these people spend a lot of time in both DC and their home where the people they represent are living, I'm not sure how you get around their need to be able to pay for all that traveling. It's part of our expectations in how they do their job. If you want to pick on someone, probably best to focus on the list at the beginning of my comment, but honestly, many of them have compelling reasons, e.g. no one is hassling you or me everywhere we go because half of the people in the country recognize us. :)
maybe they should be first to make a “sacrificel
What are you talking about? When has someone told you you cannot buy the car you want?
It's Vice, so unfortunately I'm just not that surprised this article sounds like it was written by an irate english major who just discovered /r/socialism - who would proceed to yell at engineering majors on campus interning at Boeing because they're "complicit with ruining the future".
Improving education is how we avoid this kind of dissonance among people who actually want to improve the world or effect actual climate progress.
At $10M? A very large house/mansion and lots of personal servants? That's hardly environmentally better than a jet, and is very much out of fashion today, people don't like to be tied to one place like that. A Manhattan penthouse? I don't even know. Art collection? A way to be tricked out of your money by 'advisors'.