It’s time to ban private jets – or at least tax them to the ground
ByBen Davies
08.04.2022
Last week's report into celebrity jet use made clear just how casually the rich spew carbon into the atmosphere. We should get their private planes out of the skies for good.

是时候禁止私人飞机了——或者至少对它们征以重税
2022年8月4日
作者:本·戴维斯
上周关于“名人们的私人喷气机”使用的报告清楚地表明,富豪们是多么随意地将碳排放到大气中。我们应该让他们的私人飞机永远离开天空。

Last week digital marketing agency Yard published a report based on the aggregate findings of ‘Celebrity Jets’, an automated tracker that points out the worst excesses of the A-listers by sharing their private jet flight data. (Jupiterimages / Getty Images)

上周,数字营销机构 Yard 发布了一份基于“名人们的私人喷气机”综合调查结果的报告,这是一个自动跟踪器,通过分享他们的私人飞机飞行数据来指出这些一线大A们最严重的过度(污染)行为。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Temperatures in the UK and across the world are breaking new records. With wildfires, droughts, and death tolls reaching into the thousands, the catastrophic impact of the climate crisis is here and clear for all to see.
Coupled with soaring energy and petrol prices, rampant inflation, declining real-terms wages, and a chronically underfunded and increasingly expensive transport system, the relationship between the way we travel, our wallets, and the impact on the planet have been at the forefront of this period of heightened public sensitivity and scrutiny. Direct action groups like Just Stop Oil have even targeted road infrastructure, briefly shutting down the M25 while calling for an end to new fossil fuel projects.
Pouring further (jet) fuel on to the fire of climate radicalism, last week Yard, a digital marketing agency, published a report based on the aggregate findings of ‘Celebrity Jets’, an automated tracker that points out the worst excesses of the A-listers by sharing their private jet flight data. From their CO2 emissions to their fuel costs and sometimes ludicrously short journey times, the data is laid out for scrutiny—and has sparked outrage and, sometimes, despair among the normal population, which is much more likely to bear the brunt of the climate crisis than those taking to the skies.

英国和世界各地的气温正在打破新纪录。随着野火、干旱和死亡人数达到数千人,气候危机的灾难性影响已经在这里出现,所有人都清楚地看到了。
再加上能源和汽油价格飙升、通货膨胀猖獗、实际工资下降,以及长期陷于资金不足和日益昂贵的公共交通系统,我们的旅行方式、我们的钱包和对地球的影响之间的关系一直处于最前沿在这个公众高度敏感和审查的时期。“停止使用石油”等环保直接行动组织甚至针对道路基础设施,短暂地瘫痪了M25高速公路,并呼吁停止新的化石燃料项目。
上周,数字营销机构 Yard 进一步向(私人喷气式飞机)使用的化石燃料倾注了气候激进主义之火,它发布了一份基于“名人们的私人喷气机”综合调查结果的报告,通过分享他们的私人飞机航班数据,该自动跟踪器指出了一线大A人物们,从他们的二氧化碳排放量到燃料成本,有时甚至是荒谬的短途旅行时间,这些数据都经过了仔细审查——并在普通人群中引发了愤怒、有时还是绝望的情绪,相比这些飞在天空中的人,普通人群体更有可能首当其冲地承受气候危机(带来的恶果)。

Around eighty percent of humanity has never taken a flight, while Kylie Jenner took five flights in a single week with an average flight time of less than twenty minutes, including one three-minute journey. One single journey managed to emit ten times the average annual footprint of someone from Uganda, where this week climate change has led to flash floods that have killed dozens and displaced thousands. Private jets in general are notoriously destructive for the environment, on average emitting up to fourteen times as much CO2 as commercial jets, themselves the second highest polluting form of individual transport available. And despite the growing focus on climate change, private jet usage has actually crept upward since the pandemic, with seven percent more flights in 2021 than 2019.
The role of drastic inequality in worsening in the climate crisis is not itself news. Oxfam last year reported that the carbon emissions of the richest one percent globally are set to be thirty times the level compatible the 1.5°C limit in 2030, while the carbon footprints of the poorest fifty percent are set to remain well below. Jet-setter celebrities like of Taylor Swift, Floyd Mayweather, and Jay-Z—the three Yard report-toppers—are not just irresponsible individuals, but symptoms of the rank inequality and grotesque overconsumption enabled and encouraged in the economic system under which we live.
The problem will worsen as private jets grow in size and a new cohort of ultra-rich lock themselves into this mode of transport, making their planet inexorably smaller and our planet unbearably hot. In the longer term things will likely go further as more billionaire demagogues like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos look to outer space rather than just the domestic sky to get their kicks, with emissions from a single billionaire spaceflight exceeding the lifetime emissions of someone in the poorest billion people on Earth.

人类中大约有80%从未乘坐过飞行航班,而凯莉·詹纳 (卡戴珊姐妹排名第三的、最年轻的成员) 一周内乘坐了五次(私人飞机)航班,平均飞行时间不到二十分钟,其中包括一次三分钟的旅程,她一次旅行的排放量是乌干达人平均每年碳排放足迹的十倍。本周气候变化导致山洪暴发,造成了数十人死亡,数千人流离失所。一般来说,私人飞机对环境的破坏性是出了名的,平均排放的二氧化碳是商用飞机的 14 倍,这种交通方式是交通工具污染排放中居第二高的。尽管人们越来越关注气候变化,但自疫情大流行以来,私人飞机的使用量实际上还在上升,2021 年的航班数量比2019年增加了 7%。
极端不平等在气候危机恶化中的作用本身并不是新闻。乐施会去年报告称,全球 1% 最富有的人的碳排放量将达到在2030年将气温升幅控制在1.5°摄氏度所需的限制水平的30 倍,而最贫穷的50%人类的碳足迹仍将远低于此水平。泰勒·斯威夫特、弗洛伊德·梅威瑟和杰伊·Z等私人喷气式飞机著名人物——这三位 Yard 报告中的头号人物——不仅是不负责任的人,而且在我们生活的经济体系中鼓励和加剧了不平等的等级和怪诞的过度消费的症状.
随着私人飞机规模的扩大以及新的超级富豪群体将自己锁定在这种交通方式中,这个问题将变得更加严重,使他们的星球变得无情地变小,而令我们的星球变得难以忍受。从长远来看,随着像埃隆·马斯克和杰夫·贝索斯这样的亿万富翁煽动者将目光投向外太空而不仅仅是地球上的天空,事情可能会更进一步影响到地球上的几十亿人口。

In the wake of the report and the outcry it caused, featured names like Taylor Swift and Drake hit back. Drake, hilariously, defended his predilection for short-haul flights by arguing that his journeys weren’t wasteful as his plane was empty; Swift’s team argued that she simply loans out her private jet to other individuals, apparently exonerating her of responsibility.
What these responses show is that while understandable, climate shaming, the phenomenon that sees the ultra-rich called out for their enormous emissions and green hypocrisy, seems doomed to follow the same flawed, conscience-focused path of parts of the liberal climate movement elsewhere. In the US, for example, the stagnant Biden regime has attempted to gently cajole the aviation industry to voluntarily reduce emissions by 2030, but this is nowhere near far enough. Finger-wagging directed at fossil fuel companies in the hope of shaming them into decarbonising has repeatedly proved meaningless when weighed up against record profits.
Appealing to the better angels of human nature won’t cut it; only systemic change and a mass movement determined to deliver that change can really take us forward. That movement should push for direct regulation banning hyper-polluting private jet travel, a policy which was backed by Labour in 2019 and which should now be a demand of every climate action and socialist group.

在该报道及其引起的强烈抗议之后,泰勒·斯威夫特和德雷克等名人进行了回击。德雷克为他对短途航班的偏爱辩护,他辩称他的旅程并不浪费,因为他的飞机是空的,这很有趣。斯威夫特的团队则辩称,她只是将她的私人飞机借给其他人,显然是在试图免除自己的责任。
这些反应表明,尽管可以理解,看到超级富豪因其巨大的污染排放和虚伪的环保呼吁而受到羞辱的现象,似乎注定要沿着其他地方气候运动的有缺陷的、以良心为中心的老路走下去。 例如,在美国,停滞不前的拜登政府试图温和地劝说航空企业到 2030 年自愿减少排放量,但这远远不够。当与创纪录的利润相权衡时,(环保人士)针对化石燃料公司的指手画脚,希望以此羞辱迫使它们自己进行脱碳行动,这已经一再被证明是毫无意义的。
诉诸人性中更好的天使并不能解决问题;只有系统性变革和决心实现这种变革的群众运动才能真正推动我们前进。该运动应该推动直接监管禁止高污染私人飞机旅行的政策,这项政策在 2019 年曾得到过工党的支持,现在应该成为每个气候行动和社会团体的要求。

Instituting that ban would be a step forward, proving a seriousness about tackling the obscene emissions of the rich that has so far been lacking from our global political landscape. Ultimately, however, grounding private jets is still not going to be enough without a modal shift towards low- and zero-carbon public transport, made universally accessible and free for all. This requires enormous green transport infrastructure projects to be delivered by the state and removed from the private market, placing the focus on people and the planet, not private profit. Without that, grounding private jets alone will be like swatting flies when a horde of locusts is bearing down on your door.

实施这项禁令将是向前迈出的一步,证明了我们对解决迄今为止全球政治格局中缺乏的富豪们的肆意排放问题的认真态度。然而,归根结底,如果不向低碳和零碳的公共交通方式转变,让所有人都可以普遍和方便使用,那么仅仅停飞私人飞机仍然是不够的。这需要国家交付庞大的环保的交通基础设施项目并将其从私人市场中撤出,将重点放在人和地球环境而不是私人企业利润上。如果没有这一点,单单是让私人飞机停飞就像在成群的蝗虫逼近你家大门时用苍蝇拍驱赶它们一样。