Boris Johnson — who proclaimed this week that the world is at “one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock” due to the alleged climate crisis — will travel back to London from the climate summit by private jet because a train journey would be too inconvenient due to “significant time restraints”.
Downing Street confirmed on Monday that the Prime Minister will be flying back to London on a private jet from the COP26 meeting in Glasgow at the end of this week rather than opting for the more environmentally friendly method of taking a four and a half hour train journey.
“It is important that the Prime Minister is able to move around the country and obviously we face significant time constraints,” the spokesman said per the Evening Standard, heedless of the fact that everyone else currently being told to fly less resorts to air travel for much the same reason.
Downing Street went on to defend the use of the private jet by claiming that it is one of the “most carbon-efficient planes of its size in the world” and produces 15 per cent fewer emissions than the Prime Minister’s other private jet, the Voyager.
“Our approach to tackling climate change is to use technology so that we do not have to change how we use modes of transport, rather we use technology on things like electric vehicles so that we can still get to net-zero,” the spokesman said.
The jet in question is not an electric vehicle, however.
It is not the first time Prime Minister Johnson has landed himself in hot water over the use of private jets domestically. In June, the PM flew on his private jet to Cornwall for a meeting of G7 leaders in Cornwall rather than taking the five-hour train journey.
The United Nations COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow has been beset by accusations of elitist hypocrisy, with hundreds of private jets descending upon the Scottish city.
Estimates have suggested that the emissions produced by the climate summit’s cavalcade of private jets will outpace the emissions produced by the average Scot in an entire year.
On Monday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrived in Glasgow in his $65 million private jet to meet with Britain’s Prince Charles, who also travelled to the meeting by private jet.
Ironically, the leaders of two of the world’s top polluters, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, both opted to skip the meeting in Scotland, meaning their carbon footprint for the summit will be far lower than Johnson’s.
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