And who can blame him?
My last flight on one of the big carriers was pushed back by 5 hours both ways. And there were no commercial flights to Lolita Island anyway so Bill understandably is a bit miffed about being asked to fly American Airlines.
The Microsoft co-founder grew visibly irritated when confronted on the topic during a lengthy interview last week with BBC journalist Amol Rajan.
“What do you say to the charge that if you are a climate change campaigner, but you also travel around the world in a private jet, you’re a hypocrite?” Rajan asked.
“By the gold standard of funding Climeworks to do direct air capture that far exceeds my family’s carbon footprint, and I spend billions of dollars on climate innovation. So, you know, should I stay at home and not come to Kenya and learn about farming and malaria?” an annoyed Gates responded.
“Anyway, I’m comfortable with the idea that not only am I not part of the problem by paying for the offsets, but also through the billions that my breakthrough energy group is spending, that I’m part of the solution,” Gates added.
Gates owns at least four private planes, according to a report from the website Private Jet Charter.
Every time you ask a member of the private jet set about saving the planet, they begin babbling that they bought climate offsets which is like a vegan being asked about all the burgers and explaining that he pays someone else to eat soy.
If the planet is on the verge of going boom because we haven’t gone back to the dark ages yet, there’s really not much of an excuse for announcing that you can do whatever you want as long as you buy climate chips.
But these folks don’t actually believe their own hype.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos built a mega-yacht and then funds climate stuff. Bill Gates has four jets and insists he’s not part of the problem. And how else is he supposed to get to Kenya anyway? Fly commercial? The 66,000 square foot mansion? I’m sure he’s got offsets for that too. Like paying poor people to live in shacks.
And that’s the future that our green overlords would like for us. They’ll fly their private jets and have their megayachts and mansions, they’ll just raise the prices of not only these things, but even basic goods and services to put them out of our reach with carbon taxes, then they’ll talk about how they’re saving the planet with climate investments that are government mandated, and are making money for them while taking it from us.
For the planet.
And, the trees planted (taxpayer subsidised) will be chopped down and used for firewood, which releases the CO2 again but that’s OK because it tends to be the wealthy that have open fires.
Vegan’s paying someone else to eat soy is the best retort to the rich claiming to buy carbon offsets.
I’ve never heard it better put, lol!
No, a better retort is that of the sinner buying indulgences from the church to absolve himself of sin.
I agree, Mr Profit. I’d like to add that plenty of poor people have to use open fires for cooking and sometimes warmth. But the likes of Bill Gates and other wealthy people probably don’t want to acknowledge the amount of CO₂ from poor people’s open fires. Maybe we’re seeing a kind of firewood hubris being displayed by those wealthy open fire types who use taxpayer subsidised plantation timber.
I have a suggestion that is guaranteed to solve the problem. If everybody that’s concerned about man-caused climate change were to take the “30 minutes to save the planet” challenge, all this talk of climate change would stop.
It works like this:
Stop producing personal CO2 for a mere 30 minutes. Those “single use” plastic bags from the supermarket can assist. 30 minutes to save the planet? It’s for the children. 30 minutes. If you can’t do 30, do 20.
That is a breath of fresh.
It’s people like Gates who will suffer the most when the world economy collapses.
Their money won’t buy them squat. When it comes down to ‘the survival of the fittest’, Gates won’t survive very long..
Adapting from a diet of wild caught salmon and caviar to catfish, venison and rabbit will be too much of a shock for their delicate system to handle and they’ll perish.
“Your comment is awaiting moderation.”…
Censorship is a growing cancer even on ‘conservative’ websites.
It’s just software looking for keywords.
Sixty years ago the Fortran compiler was in infancy. There were no cellphones, no desktop computers.
We were living in paradise.
Ah, the days of “Gone fishing.” I held off on getting a cell phone for a long time just because sometimes I don’t want to be reached. That said, I was cleaning up and came across some of my pen and ink blueprints and manual mill dividing head settings for cutting gears. I realized how much CAD/CAM has increased my capabilities and made my work easier. And I love having a library, maps, a camera, and notepad on hand. Tech is useful, just don’t let it rule you.
I was the same way. I didn’t want a cell phone at first. Sometimes when my phone rings I don’t even answer it or look at the number calling me. But now I can’t live without it.
Killing millions of people with the jab offsets this, he’s an envirofascist Saint
Translation:
You peasants complaining about my extravagant life style and pointing out it’s glaring hypocrisy is just annoying static and is distracting me from my important work to tell YOU HOW TO LIVE..
The key point here that all us peasants must understand is that the powerful, wealthy and elite will not be affected in the slightest by the policies and misery they force on us.
They used to put lunatics in straitjackets.
He is using the same argument as the pigs in Animal Farm. Of course, it’s the same argument as every communist and socialist tyrant has used, so it’s no surprise.
Little Billy “Show me the money” Gates firmly believes that Rank Has It’s Privileges (RHIP) and he’s so rank I can smell that little snot miles away.
” like a vegan being asked about all the burgers and explaining that he pays someone else to eat soy…” – The whole post was spot on Daniel, among the best of a lot of greats, but consider that shamelessly stolen by me, and used and abused for the rest of my life.
So he’s buying indugences. Got it.
That’s a good one, buying indulgences 🙂
After the recent near-misses, I’m scared to fly commercials also. Affirmative Action pilots and air traffic controllers?
And small private planes have scared me for a long time also. Several fairly close associates have died in several different crashes of small private planes. I wonder if that is normal, knowing so many who have died in plane crashes?
Yes, it’s normal. Think of how many car crashes happen each year. Flying a plane has to be harder than driving a car. My uncle flew his own Cessna to Baja for decades.
Yeah. Just one small aspect of it: it’s easy to get disoriented while flying a plane. Get disoriented when driving a car, one can just keep following the road. Get disoriented flying a plane, who knows what will happen, where one will end up, it could be dark in the night, or foggy in bad weather …
So will the Eco-Freaks still use Mircosoft?
This is why The DemonRat/LibTurds are also referred to as”LiboCrites”??????????????????????
If spending money on the climate crusade absolves Gates from the offense of flying private, shouldn’t the poor of the world who do not fly at all be absolved of what Gates considers offensive?