Climate-change activists are the best spokespeople for why climate change isn’t at the top of most Americans’ concerns and why their policies would be detrimental to everyone but the very wealthy.
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist, arrived in New York City on Wednesday after sailing across the Atlantic on a yacht with solar panels and wind turbines. Forget the fact that carbon is emitted during the construction of the yacht and solar panels. CBS News reported the yacht “had no kitchen, no heating, no fridge and no bathroom.” Thunberg took the yacht to raise awareness about the harmful emissions caused by taking commercial airlines.
But even though Thunberg and her crew sailed across the Atlantic using the yacht, it still has to get back. For that, the sailing team for the yacht, known as the “Malizia II” will be flown across the Atlantic to retrieve the vessel.
The Associated Press reported that two members of Team Malizia will be flown to the U.S. to retrieve the boat and will pay to offset the flight’s carbon emissions.
“A spokeswoman for Team Malizia said it’ll be necessary to fly the crew to the U.S. because the high-profile trip with the 16-year-old Swedish campaigner that left Plymouth on Wednesday was arranged at very short notice,” the AP reported.
The spokeswoman, Holly Cova, told the AP in an email that “we only have one boat, so they cannot easily sail over to meet them.” She said this was “an imperfect solution” but thought that offsetting the flights to retrieve the boat was “better than doing nothing.”
German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that four flights are required to get team members to the U.S. to retrieve the boat and for other crew members to return.
“Four flights would also have been incurred if Swedish climate activist Thunberg and her father had flown from Europe to the special climate summit in New York and back instead of sailing with the racing yacht Malizia II,’” the outlet reported.
To offset the carbon emissions created by the flights, the team is paying “organizations that use them to finance climate-friendly projects and thus save emissions elsewhere.”
This underscores the fact that being climate-friendly is much easier for the wealthy, who can continue to live as they do now and pay other people to help the planet. For the rest of us, we have to uproot our lifestyles to comply with climate policies.
This same scenario plays out among celebrities and politicians who take private jets while claiming the world will end if we don’t reduce our climate footprint. In January, The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported that celebrities and activists took more than 1,500 private jets to attend a posh climate change event in Switzerland. Leonardo DiCaprio — one of Hollywood’s biggest proponents of climate change hysteria — continues to use yachts and private jets, as does former Vice President Al Gore. They also have multiple homes and fly far more regularly than the average person, yet they pay others to reduce their carbon emissions so they don’t have to.