Greenpeace is calling for an end to unnecessary private flights, denouncing the «master class in hypocrisy» of the more than 1,000 private jets flying to next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which generate the same volume of greenhouse gas emissions as the equivalent of 350,000 cars driving 750 kilometers a day for a week.
The emissions data have been estimated in a report carried out by the Dutch consultancy Delft for the NGO, which estimated that 1,040 private jets entered and left the airports serving Davos during the week of its last meeting, which means a fourfold increase in CO2 emissions from these airports during those days compared to the figures for the rest of the year.
In addition, the study notes that more than half (53%) of the flights made were short-haul, less than 750 kilometers, and 38 percent flew less than 500 kilometers. There was even one flight of only 21 kilometers. According to the report, the countries with the highest traffic to Davos airports were Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
The NGO criticizes that the 2023 World Economic Forum will analyze ways to address the climate crisis from a bold collective action. For the executive director of Greenpeace Spain, Eva Saldaña, Davos represents «the most perverse of a failed socio-economic system».
«Elites who try to sell an image of sustainability and that they are there to change the world while they concentrate an obscenely disproportionate amount of wealth and power and benefit at the expense of the majority of people and the planet, putting life in check,» she criticizes.
For her part, the spokesperson for Greenpeace’s European mobility campaign, Klara Maria Schenk, regrets that the «rich and powerful» who come to Davos to debate behind closed doors on climate and inequality use the «most polluting and unequal means of transport that exists» and precisely when Europe is registering the warmest January since records have been kept.
In addition, he pointed out that 80 percent of the world’s population has never traveled by plane but suffers the consequences of the emissions caused by these «climate bombs that are private jets».
«The World Economic Forum claims to be committed to the Paris Agreement as we are faced with an unbearable master class in hypocrisy. Private jets must become history if we are to have a green, just and safe future for all. World leaders must lead by example and ban private jets and clearly dispensable short-haul flights,» he concluded.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
