Tracking billionaire carbon emissions

Mother Jones tells us more about 17-year-old Akash Shendur, creator of the now-suspended Twitter account @elonjet. After being suspended, Shendur expanded their project to create ClimateJets.org, a site dedicated to calculating and publicizing the private travel of the world's richest people and families.

The average U.S. resident causes about 17 tons of carbon dioxide annually. But for those who fly and especially for those who fly private, that figure is much higher.

At the top of his list is Thomas Siebel, the billionaire CEO of C3.ai, with 5,126 tons of emissions per year—roughly 300 times average. And that’s just flying—it doesn’t count any of Siebel’s other activities.

Richer people have more money to fly, and the richest of all can fly just about whenever they want. Bigger homes, and gas-guzzling cars just add to the fossil-fuel consumption tally. Coming anywhere close to achieving our climate goals will requires the rich and super-rich to change where they live and how they get around.