A Seattle teen is creating a bit of turbulence with a website tallying the carbon emissions of the ultra-rich traveling on private jets.
Akash Shendure totaled up last year’s jet emissions for 163 famous individuals from the worlds of business, tech, entertainment and sports. The results are posted on his ClimateJets site.
The high school senior created the dataset by pulling together multiple sources of information: flight data gathered by a network of volunteers; aircraft ownership information; aircraft fuel consumption rates; and data on carbon emissions from various types of jet fuel.
“I really want it to not only hold certain people accountable but also spread awareness of the disparity between carbon emissions of the ultra-rich and average Americans,” Shendure said in an interview on the public radio station KUOW.
The highest ranking polluter from the Pacific Northwest is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, landing in 13th place. Gates, who is co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and creator of climate-focused Breakthrough Energy, racked up 393 flights on three jets, according to ClimateJets.
His domestic and international flights are estimated to have produced more than 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide — the emissions equivalent of almost 200 average Americans.
It’s a tricky position to be in for someone publicly advocating to curb global warming.
In his own defense, Gates has said for a number of years that he offsets his family’s annual emissions by paying companies that remove carbon from the atmosphere. At the Breakthrough Energy Summit in October, Gates specified that he spends about $9 million a year to clear his carbon debt and that he also purchases low-carbon fuel. And Breakthrough Energy Ventures is investing billions of dollars into companies innovating climate friendly technologies.
Shendure credits Gates for buying offsets — many, or perhaps most, of the others on the list don’t do the same — but he doesn’t go all the way to absolving him.
“There is still a question of whether those private jet flights are necessary as they could still be making those investments without flying,” Shendure told KUOW.
Some other tech titans and their rank on the list:
No. 1: Thomas Siebel, founder of enterprise software company Siebel Systems
No. 21: Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta
No. 38: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
No. 40: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft
No. 41: Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, owner of Twitter
ClimateJets allows users to click on the names of the jet-setters to learn details about their travel.
Gates, for example, hit 20 foreign countries last year, though his most frequent destinations were his hometown of Seattle; Palm Springs, Calif.; Carlsbad, Calif.; Bozeman, Mont.; and Newark, N.J.
Bezos, who is also dedicating some of his time and massive wealth to combating climate change, embarked on 169 private jet flights. His foreign destinations were Portugal, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Japan. Bezos’ most frequent trips were to Seattle and four California cities: Camarillo, Burbank, El Segundo and Van Nuys.
On his website, Shendure thanks Jack Sweeney, creator of the database tracking the ownership of private jets. Sweeney gained attention for launching the @ElonJet Twitter feed in 2020, which provided real-time information tracking Musk’s flights. Twitter axed the account in December for violating new rules implemented under Musk’s ownership.
Sweeney now runs @ElonJetNextDay, which incorporates a 24-hour delay in the location information in order to stay within Twitter’s rules.
