These elite climate hypocrites are amongst the most powerful people in the world. Here’s why you shouldn’t trust them
By Diane Small
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words still ring true. It seems today, the very rich – let’s call them the ‘elite’ – are the high priests of climate change.
They’re the ones making hysterical climate statements in the press about how the world’s about to end any year now – unless you make drastic changes. They’re attending important conferences by private jet to mull around the idea of enforcing strict standards on the public (which may even include the end of private cars and locking us in our homes to ‘protect the planet.‘) They are the ones passing laws imposing strict new rules on us…while breaching all those rules themselves.
Given their own actions, how can we take these climate hypocrites seriously? Why are we letting them get away with telling us what to do, while they’d never dream of doing those things themselves? Why aren’t we asking questions like: do these people really believe what they say? And if so, how can they justify what they do?
I’m not saying we’re all not hypocrites to some extent. Hey, nobody’s perfect, right? I work for an eco luxury fashion magazine, but I’ve shopped fast fashion, for example. The difference is: I’m not trying to force you to change your daily habits, while I continue living a lifestyle so lavish, so planet-destroying, most people can barely wrap their heads around it.
From the ultra elite who preach about climate change, we see an especially odious kind of hypocrisy: hypocrisy as an abuse of power. There is something really, really wrong about using your (considerable!) cash and authority to influence the behaviour of others, whilst refusing to submit yourself to the same principles. Wouldn’t you agree?
Ready to meet some of the biggest climate hypocrites, ever? Read on!
Elite Climate Hypocrites With Zero Credibility
1. Bill Gates
“Yeah, I probably have one of the highest greenhouse gas footprints of anyone on the planet.” That flippant statement comes from the man who wants YOU to stop heating your home too much. Who wants YOU to give up your car altogether and stop eating any meat. And who wants YOU to stop having kids to end overpopulation (though he’s the father of 3).
Bill Gates, ladies and gentlemen! Another of the world’s worst climate hypocrites.
This man owns several opulent estates. One of which had sand flown in from the Caribbean for its own private beach. He also owns a gas-guzzling $70-million Bombardier BD-700 Global Express private jet that burns 486 gallons of fossil fuel per hour, more carbon-emitting farmland—242,000 acres—than any other private citizen in the U.S.
But that’s not all! Whilst preaching the world must speed up its efforts to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the billionaire acquired the world’s largest private jet service company in 2021, and has quite a few of his own personal jets, too.
He dismisses concerns for his luxurious form of travel because he claims “his miles are offset” and his fleet of jets only use “sustainable fuel.” Sorry, but LOL! Really? If such a fuel is available, why isn’t it being commercialised?
Power of the dollar
The facts mentioned above may surprise you, because they haven’t been widely reported in the media. And there’s a reason for that.
The Gates foundation holds around $46.8 Billion in assets, and some of those hold a considerable influence over the global media. For example, the BBC has received millions in funding from The Gates Foundation, as have Le Monde, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, the Financial Times, the Atlantic and many, many other news outlets. In fact, The Foundation spent over $250 million in ‘donations’ to news outlets in 2020. Oh, and let’s not forget that Gates has his very own news network, too: MSNBC. (The ‘MS’ stands for his company, ‘Microsoft’, which partnered with NBC to create the network).
Bill Gates pretty much owns the media.
But that’s not all.
He’s also given millions upon millions to major university departments – especially in the fields of climate science, agriculture and medicine. What that likely means is that he gets to set the agendas taught at those institutions.
For example, he encourages university agricultural programs to promote synthetic fertilisers and GMOs as a great agricultural inventions. But he fails to mention that synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are creating desertification, dead zones in the ocean, and nitrous oxide, which is a greenhouse gas. The very thing he’s trying to reduce! Hmm….
He also funds boards throughout the world to promote educational policies that turn classrooms into political indoctrination halls, promoting Gates’ destructive personal agendas.
Pretty much a Bond villain
But perhaps the worst thing is this. He’s working with Harvard University to blot out the sun. Yep, you read that right. It’s no conspiracy theory.
He’s funding the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) which is being launched by Harvard University scientists. Gates believes spraying metallic nanoparticles into the sky will potentially reflect sunlight off the Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. Considering this approach has the potential to devastate global agriculture, not to mention the unpredictable risks it could have on the weather, and the health of plants, humans and animals, it seems reckless, to say the very least.
These particulates will have a negative effect on the soil, making it difficult, if not impossible, to grow food. But guess what? Gates has thought of that. He’s also one of the biggest investors in Monsanto, the evil corporation which has created seeds that can grow in aluminium contaminated soil. Kerching!
Gates himself has said: “I own big houses and fly in private planes — in fact, I took one to Paris for the climate conference — so who am I to lecture anyone on the environment?” Yep, exactly, Bill.
Please shut up and leave us alone.
2. Al Gore
Al Gore is at the top of our list of celebrity climate hypocrites with zero credibility with good reason.
In fact, the hypocrisy charge has been raised against Gore several times over the years. So far, the most infamous incident took place in 2007 when it was widely reported that Gore’s mansion had a utility bill around 20 times more than the average family home. In fact, the heating for his pool alone could heat 14 average homes!
Furthermore, Gore has vilified fossil fuel usage for decades, and has disparaged high-emission nations and their leaders. But when he wanted to sell his failing Current TV network, he was happy to do so to Al Jazeera – owned by one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, Qatar. I guess he just couldn’t resist the $500 million offer.
Speaking of money, Gore is quite clever about using climate change as a means of gaining it. He is known to be the first ‘climate billionaire’, thanks to a carbon cap-and-trade scheme he and David Blood put together in 2004 via their company, Generation Investment Management (GIM).
Two years after he released his deliberately terrifying (but wildly inaccurate) film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore was able to put $35 million into hedge funds and private partnerships through the Capricorn Investment Group, a company founded Gore’s friend Jeffrey Skoll. It was Skoll’s Participant Media that produced Gore’s film. Which helped get people interested in cap-and-trade schemes. And speaking of that film….
Inconvenient Truths
Perhaps the main reason Gore is one of our top climate hypocrites is thanks to his fear mongering. Specifically, nearly every single claim made in An Inconvenient Truth has been proven wrong. And he probably knew it.
Shortly after the film was released, a British High Court judge ruled that the film could not be shown in schools without ‘guidance notes’ for teachers, as it contained so many significant errors. You can see these below, along with the court’s reasons for calling out these ‘errors’.
1. The sea level will rise up to 20 feet because of the melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland in the near future. (This “Armageddon scenario” might only take place over thousands of years.)
2. Some low-lying Pacific islands have been so inundated with water that their citizens have all had to evacuate to New Zealand. (“There is no evidence of any such evacuation ever having happened.”)
3. Global warming will shut down the “ocean conveyor,” by which the Gulf Stream moves across the North Atlantic to Western Europe. This will lead to an ‘ice age’ in Europe. (According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself, “it is very unlikely that the Ocean Conveyor will shut down in the future…”)
4. There is a direct coincidence between the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the rise in temperature over the last 650,000 years. (“Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs [in the film] do not establish what Mr. Gore asserts.”)
5. The disappearance of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro is expressly attributable to global warming. (“The scientific consensus is that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mount. Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.”)
6. The drying up of Lake Chad is a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming. (“…evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution.” It’s more likely due to a large population increase and overgrazing.)
7. Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is because of global warming. (“It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.”)
8. Polar bears are drowning because they have to swim long distances to find ice. (“The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one, which indicates that only four polar bears have recently been found drowned”. And that was because of a storm.)
9. Coral reefs all over the world are bleaching because of global warming and other factors. (Separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as overfishing and pollution, is impossible).
Gore’s movie also included the following inaccuracies:
The warming ocean could fuel more frequent and more intense Atlantic hurricanes. Nope, hasn’t happened. In fact, hurricane frequency has dropped somewhat; hurricane intensities haven’t changed much.
Due to global warming, there would be wars fought over resources by 2020. But it seems the only wars over ‘resources’ have been started by America, for oil.
As ice sheets collapse, our shores will be flooded and cities like Miami and New York will sink beneath the water leaving millions of people homeless in the very near future. Nearly twenty years later, well, let’s just say Miami and New York are clearly just fine, thanks.
Within a decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. Well, nearly 20 years on, there’s still plenty of snow.
The North Pole would be ice-free by 2014. Still pretty snowy up there!
Making a film to scare people into believing CO2 will imminently end the world as we know it, then profiting enormously from the resulting panic via cap-and-trade schemes? How convenient!
3. Prince Harry (& Meghan Markle)
Prince Harry definitely deserves to be in the top 3 of our climate hypocrites list.
He told Oprah Winfrey: “Kids growing up in today’s world, pretty depressing right. Depending on where you live, your home country is either on fire, it’s either underwater, hoses or forests are being flattened.” Well, if you believe those climate issues are caused by CO2, you have Prince Harry and his wife to blame for quite a lot of emissions.
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,recently bought their first home in the upscale neighbourhood of Montecito in Santa Barbara. It features two energy-guzzling saunas, a massive home cinema, a vast games room, 13 bathrooms and even a Japanese-style tea house.
Just a humble little home for two sustainably-minded folks, right? But one of their biggest eco-sins? How they travel.
Proud jet setters
In March 2019, Harry took a $10,000 private helicopter trip to attend an official engagement in Birmingham. Only two days before delivering a climate speech!
Months later, Harry travelled by both private jet and a helicopter to attend the annual ultra-exclusive Google climate change summit in Sardinia.
Then, already facing heat in the media over his Google jaunt, he, Meghan and Archie then proceeded to take four private jet flights in the space of 11 days. Were these for vital engagements? Nope. They just wanted to flit around Europe, soaking up the sunshine in Ibiza and the south of France. And let’s not forget the time Harry took a private jet for a two-hour flight to California from Aspen, Colorado, after participating in a charity polo match.
In fact, former UK MP and current Privy Council member Norman Baker claimed that per his calculations in the 12 months to January 2020, the Sussexes’ carbon footprint was around 26 times that of the average Brit thanks to them taking 53 international flights, including 18 by private jet.
That’s quite a footprint for someone who claims he can’t get out of bed some days due to ‘anxiety about climate change.’
But that’s not the only reason Harry is one of our top climate hypocrites.
Death and destruction
The only thing more devastating to the planet than climate change is war. And Harry was directly involved in the war in Afghanistan, and served two terms on the frontline. What that means is that he was likely directly involved in the bombing and destruction of an entire Middle Eastern country.
Eco-hypocrisy doesn’t get worse than that.
“We could all do better,” Harry has said. “While no one is perfect, we all have a responsibility for our own individual impact. The question is what we do to balance it out.”
If Harry wants to ‘balance out’ his carbon footprint, he’d better start to get used to living off grid in a cave somewhere!
4. Elon Musk
This might surprise you: Elon Musk is another of the world’s biggest climate hypocrites.
He supposedly believes humanity is on the brink of disaster because of global warming. He has said that his for-profit car company, Tesla, “exists to help reduce risk of catastrophic climate change,” and that fossil fuels, which have powered the greatest explosion of wealth and human flourishing in our history, are “an insane experiment.”
But Musk has revealed himself to be yet another billionaire who spouts environmentalist talking points while living a fabulous, carbon-intensive lifestyle.
For example, in 2018, the Washington Post reported that Musk’s corporate jet “flew more than 150,000 miles last year, or more than six times around the Earth, as he raced between the outposts of his futuristic empire.”
Think about this for a second. A billionaire who espouses the danger of climate change flies 150,000 miles, emitting much more carbon dioxide than if he flew commercial…or used Zoom.
But that’s not even the biggest reason he’s one of the hugest climate hypocrites, ever.
Planetary destruction through SpaceX
While most people think Musk is some kind of eco-warrior thanks to Tesla, they seem to forget altogether that Musk owns another even larger company: SpaceX.
SpaceX is one of the most environmentally destructive companies on Earth. It has launched the Falcon Heavy rocket with the aim of exploring other planets and to to taxi astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The rocket emits roughly 440 tonnes of kerosene, which is small, compared to total global industrial emissions. But here’s the thing: SpaceX’s plans a rocket launch every two weeks. Which means it will emit a whopping 10,560 tonnes of carbon per year.
SpaceX has also launched more than 1,000 new satellites for its Starlink constellation over the last 2 years. Starlink was launched to radiate 5G and other wifi frequencies to Earth. Physicists have warned that this radiation could interfere with the Earth’s natural frequencies, as well with signals from weather satellites. Astronomers have also blamed the light from these objects for polluting the night skies.
Moreover, SpaceX’s rockets and satellites not only emit loads of CO2 when launched, but they also contribute to space debris. This is rapidly becoming one of the biggest pollution problems we face today.
So, not only is Musk making the Earth and its atmosphere more polluted, he’s also polluting outer space. Good job, Elon! Celebrity climate hypocrites don’t get worse than this.
5. John Kerry
John Kerry is a better choice for our climate hypocrites list than he was for President Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate change. The multi millionaire held loads of investments in oil companies prior to divesting from the stocks as he took over the position.
His financial disclosure forms show that the former secretary of state was financially invested in numerous oil companies, including Duke Energy, Cimarex, Dominion Energy, Exelon Corporation and Valero Energy.
Hypocritically, at the same time that Kerry held investments in oil companies, he also worked with climate group The Rise Fund, where he served as a senior adviser, and Climate Finance Partners, where he acted as chairman of the advisory board. Say what?
Carbon tax for thee, but not for me!
The main aim of the latter group is to focus on the development of a global price for carbon. Which means you and I will be charged a fee for all our carbon emissions, be they from heating our houses, going on holiday or using our cars.
As for the climate hypocrites like John Kerry, bet you all my carbon credits he doesn’t pay a penny in penalties for using his own private jet, which he boldly flies to climate change conferences.
According to the Daily Mail, this is what Kerry had to say about his use of a private jet:
‘If you offset your carbon – it’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle. What I’m doing, almost full time, is working to win the battle on climate change, and in the end, if I offset and contribute my life to do this, I’m not going to be put on the defensive.”
Poor fellow indeed. Forced to fly in a private jet for our own good.
6. Laurie David
The producer of Al Gore’s discredited climate film An Inconvenient Truth is our final of our celebrity climate hypocrites. She has said SUV owners are “terrorist enablers.” She has paid for television commercials demanding higher mileage standards for cars and trucks. She owns and operates the website StopGlobal-Warming.com.
In her many media interviews, Laurie David brags about she uses only recycled paper products and she has made her two children take shorter showers. Yeah, great. But…
David’s new 25,000-square foot house on Martha’s Vineyard is even bigger than her friend Al Gore’s. Let’s remember Gore’s Tennessee house uses 20 times as much energy as the national average. But that’s not the worst part.
Wanton wildlife destruction
She was cited for violating the Wetlands Protection Act during the construction of a tennis court on her sprawling Chilmark property, when workers installed boards and stones to construct a path to the court. She blamed the contractors. Which wouldn’t be such a major deal – IF she hadn’t been cited for the exact same violation before. In 2005, David constructed a stone fire pit, a barbecue area and a children’s theater stage. She did this all in a protected wetlands area – without a permit.
You may wonder: how does an LA resident like Mrs. David travel between her west coast home and her east coast summer house? Answer: She charters a Gulfstream jet. It’s estimated that a midsized Gulfstream G200 burns as much fuel on one transcontinental flight as a Hummer monster SUV consumes in an entire year.
Like her colleagues Al Gore and Bill Gates, it seems David believes conservation is what other people should do.
What are your thoughts on these elite climate hypocrites? We’d love to hear from you in the comments, below!
All images: Wikicommons
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