Bill Gates has four private jets, and he is well known to use them flying around the world telling the ordinary punters like you and me that we have to reduce our carbon emissions to save the planet, whatever that means. Gates flew over 213,000 miles on 59 private jet flights in 2017 alone, and this emitted an estimated 1,760 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. He was challenged quite passively in an interview about how he justified this and said, that since he is saving the planet, and putting up money through his Breakthrough Energy Group, he needs to be cut some slack.
But, it is doubtful from an environmentalist position that Gates is really offsetting the amount of pollution he is producing. For example, he said: “Should I stay at home and not come to Kenya and learn about farming and malaria?” I would say that any information he needed could be obtained by local people and fed to him via the internet, with a vastly reduced carbon footprint. No, he is a jet plane travel junkie.
