Brandon Vigliarolo Wed 30 Oct 2024 // 10:30 UTC
Despite their self-professed environmental bona fides, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the their ilk are responsible for so much carbon emissions that the average person would need a lifetime to match the amount one of them spews in 90 minutes.
That’s the claim from international nonprofit Oxfam, which yesterday published what it said is the first-ever study looking at the luxury transport (i.e., private jets and yachts) and investment emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires.
“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and – make no mistake – threatening lives,” Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar said of the findings. “It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal.”
Private jets, one of the most visible and publicized ways the ultra-rich get around, are significant polluters but still pale in comparison to the impact of their other indulgences. Billionaires are “treating our planet like their personal playground [and] setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit,” in Behar’s words.
Oxfam was able to identify private jets belonging to 23 of the billionaires it looked at for its report, and found that they flew an average of 184 times in a 12-month period, spending around 425 hours in the air during the period. Those jets emitted an average of 2,074 tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to what the average person would emit in 300 years, or what someone in the global poorest 50 percent would emit if they lived for two millennia.
Musk and Bezos were called out for particularly egregious emissions, with Musk’s fleet of two (known) private jets responsible for 5,497 tons of CO2 over the course of a year (equivalent to 834 years of emissions from the average Earthling), and Bezos’ two-jet fleet emitting around 2,908 tons of carbon.
Once a darling of environmentalists for his work on electric vehicles, Musk has had no shortage of negative coverage for his excessive use of private jets, including for incredibly brief flights instead of a surface commute.
Yachts are even worse, with the average seafaring billionaire pleasure boat responsible for nearly three times as much carbon emission as the average private jet.
Along with looking at jet and yacht emissions, Oxfam also examined the stakes that various billionaires have in corporations and their publicly stated emissions, and the findings are stark.
Of the 50 billionaires studied, around 40 percent of their investments were in high-polluting industries like oil, mining, and shipping, with few having significant renewable energy investments. That means the average billionaire’s investment portfolio is responsible for 340 times the emissions of private jets and yachts – combined.
But don’t forget to recycle
While the billionaires in the study might be raking in the cash for themselves, Oxfam said that its findings suggest their voluminous carbon footprints are causing far more losses around the globe. (snip-More)
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/30/tech_billionaires_carbon_footprint/
| October 31, 1929 George Henry Evans, an English-born printer and journalist, published the first issue of the Working Man’s Advocate, “edited by a Mechanic” for the “useful and industrious classes” of New York City. Evan covered the Workingmen’s Party (which he helped found) and the early trade union movement. In his Prospectus, Evans focused on the inequities between the “portion of society living in luxury and idleness” and those “groaning under the oppressions and miseries imposed on them.” He advocated “a system of education which shall be equally open to all, as in a real republic it should be” and opposed “every thing which savors of a union of church and state.” Evans became a U.S. citizen one week later. |
October 31, 1950 Earl Lloyd became the first of three African Americans who began to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA) when he started with the Washington Capitols. He and Jim Tucker went on to become the first African Americans to play on a championship team in 1955 as members of the Syracuse Nationals, which is now the Philadelphia 76ers.  After retiring as a player, Lloyd was a Detroit Pistons assistant coach for two seasons, and a scout for five. |
| October 31, 1952 The U.S. successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen (or fusion) bomb, in the atmosphere at the Eniwetok Proving Grounds on the Elugelab Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the southern Pacific. The 10.4-megaton device was the first thermonuclear device built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion.  Mike’s Mushroom cloudThe incredible explosive force of Mike was apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom cloud – within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and entered the stratosphere at a rate of 400 mph. One minute later it reached 108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched sixty miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.The explosion wiped Elugelab off the face of the planet, leaving a crater more than 50 meters (175 feet) deep, and destroyed life on the surrounding islands. The details and the results Early U.S.nuclear tests |
| October 31, 1958 The U.S., the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics aka Soviet Union) and Great Britain began negotiations in Geneva on whether to let the nuclear testing moratorium become a permanent test ban. General Secretary Nikita Kruschev had unilaterally declared a moratorium on Soviet testing earlier in the year, President Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Harold MacMillan following suit in August. There had been growing concern over the health effects of radioactive fallout in the atmosphere from the nuclear explosions. Nonetheless, all three nations did further last-minute tests before the moratorium took effect. |
| October 31, 1972 20-POINT POSITION PAPER PREAMBLE AN INDIAN MANIFESTO FOR RESTITUTION, REPARATIONS, RESTORATION OF LANDS FOR A RECONSTRUCTION OF AN INDIAN FUTURE IN AMERICA THE TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES: “We need not give another recitation of past complaints nor engage in redundant dialogue of discontent. Our conditions and their cause for being should perhaps be best known by those who have written the record of America’s action against Indian people. In 1832, Black Hawk correctly observed: You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The government of the United States knows the reasons for our going to its capital city. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to greet us. We go because America has been only too ready to express shame, and suffer none from the expression – while remaining wholly unwilling to change to allow life for Indian people. We seek a new American majority – a majority that is not content merely to confirm itself by superiority in numbers, but which by conscience is committed toward prevailing upon the public will in ceasing wrongs and in doing right. For our part, in words and deeds of coming days, we propose to produce a rational, reasoned manifesto for construction of an Indian future in America. If America has maintained faith with its original spirit, or may recognize it now, we should not be denied.” |
| October 31, 1978 30,000 Iranian oil workers went on strike against the repressive rule of the U.S.-installed Shah and for democracy, civil and human rights.  Striking Iranian oil workers. Photo: December 1978 issue of Resistance. A publication of the Iranian Students Association in the U.S. (ISAUS) Read more |
| October 31, 1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot to death by two Sikh members of her own security guard while walking in the garden of her New Delhi home. Gandhi’s son, Rajiv, a member of parliament and a leader in the Congress-I Party, was sworn in as Prime Minister following the assassination. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october31
Pres. Biden did not call Trump supporters garbage. He called the the rhetoric from the comic supporter on stage at MSG garbage. I’ve read about this, and seen the WH transcript, but somehow, the other story keeps being disseminated, even though Pres. Biden is not running for President, so I feel this should be addressed. I looked around for the most mainstream media outlet that told the full story at the beginning where people can see it, rather than writing it up as a did-he-or-didn’t-he, or worse, as a he-did with a later tiny retraction that will remain unseen. It wouldn’t hurt to mention this if the subject arises out there in the world. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal when the same media outlets don’t bother informing the country about any of the stuff the Republicans say about their political oppo, on the regular.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bidens-response-to-garbage-joke-about-puerto-rico/
President Biden reinserted himself into the contentious campaign to succeed him, appearing to call former President Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage” on a video call with Latino activists Tuesday evening. Republicans seized on the comments, while the White House offered a different explanation of what Mr. Biden said.
The president was responding to a joke made at a Trump rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, in which Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
In the video clip obtained by CBS News, it sounded like Mr. Biden, who was speaking by video to left-leaning group Voto Latino, might be denouncing Trump supporters as “garbage.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” he seemed to say. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.”
But the White House denied that the president had said this about Trump supporters and released a transcript with a statement noting that “supporters” was in fact “supporter’s,” and Mr. Biden was referring to Hinchcliffe and his joke.
A White House transcript says this is what Mr. Biden said: “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know —or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr— in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
“The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage,'” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. (snip-More, but it’s mostly Republican commentary about it with no ownership of what they’ve actually said.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c207gz7key6o
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Got up very early this morning at about 2 AM. But things happening in our life, and with Kamyk. He was talking hospice and now is going back in for surgery. Ron has been replacing outlets in the house after he found one soot discolored and melted from arching wires. It has been a hard four days. The water has been off for two days, so today after Ron replaced our cold water kitchen tap filters I started doing dishes. At 8 AM. After repeated medication taking and breaks, while he was doing the outlets at nearly 1 pm he took over to do the rest as I was not able to stand. He bitched me out for pushing my self so hard but I returned the favor for him also pushing himself to replace the outlets on that line regardless if they needed it. Now we are putting up my 34 inch TV that I had in my first office before I got the 55 inch 4K TV in the kitchen for Ron. Ron wanted one to have at his stove so he could watch his cooking shows and try to follow them. I love him. I found the best extension / folding arm for him and was helping him find the perfect spot to put the TV / bracket. Until I fell on the floor with my shoulders and back hurting so bad I couldn’t hold myself upright. Then Ron got upset and mad because I hurt myself but instead of listening tried to banish me from the project. But after I corrected three serious errors he made he admitted he needed my help, but he put huge conditions on it. So I am sitting in my office typing this waiting until he calls me, or … Until I just go out and ask what next. Sorry lots I wanted to post.
Also for those that care my grand friend kamyk is again going into surgery which is better than him saying he was going to hospice, and he set up a joint text loop with his family and some of his friends. Oh one of his family members is a huge piece of work who wants to make every conversation about her. We are there because her brother may be dying but she tries hard to make everything about her. I am only holding my tongue because I care about Kamyk so much. She can not even use his preferred name which the other sister does. Anyone who knows me understands how hard it was for me not to lash out at her for that. But my friend thinks his life is over and he may be dying. Not the time to pick a fight with his sister. Hugs
Looks like 24K Likes and What all. Thank you again! I hope it keeps moving!
Scottie's Playtime 