Are you one of the French people who have gone on vacation close to home to limit their cost and their carbon impact? Bernard Arnault, no. The real-time monitoring of private jets denounces the irresponsibility of the richest in terms of pollution.
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The plane is certainly a fast means of transport, but it is also very polluting. So much so that Europeans and North Americans, concerned about the environment, feel flight shame. This shame of flying – skillfully translated into avihonte by Quebecers – has an impact on many people who decide to change their habits. According to a UBS poll of 6,000 people in France, Germany, the UK and the US, one in five people have decided to reduce their number of air travels as a result. But the flight tracking shows that some are much less concerned about it.
From curiosity to activism
Real-time aircraft tracking sites are not new. One of the best known, FlightRadar24, has been around since 2006, for example. It is powered by more than 13,000 volunteers with ADS-B receivers that track aircraft. Mainly used to find out where the flight of a loved one was or to satisfy the curiosity of aviation enthusiasts, the use of this data for militant purposes is much more recent and, above all, involuntary.
The Twitter account @ElonJet was created in June 2020 not by an environmental activist who hates Elon Musk, but on the contrary by a teenager interested in Tesla, aviation and space. American Jack Sweeney quickly disturbed Elon Musk with this initiative. The billionaire asked him to delete the account for security reasons – “I don’t like the idea of being shot by a psycho,” he told her – going so far as to offer her $5,000. The student, explaining that he admired her, was not impressed and gave her three options: 50,000 dollars, a Tesla Model 3 car or an internship in his company. Today, the account is still active.
If he had launched ElonJet out of simple curiosity, Jack Sweeney has since created a company specializing in the tracking of aircraft of celebrities and billionaires with accounts such as CelebJets, Corporate_Jets or PutinJet. The idea inspired the French, who initiated @laviondebernard, dedicated to LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, on Instagram and Twitter. The latter was intended from the start to denounce his almost daily private jet flights: in July 2022, for example, he consumed 133 tonnes of CO2 in private jets, i.e. 13 years of carbon footprint of an average Frenchman. Jack Sweeney also wants to satisfy his environmental subscribers by now adding other data such as the amount of fuel used, its cost and its carbon footprint.
Under the glitter, the pollution
Since this data is displayed everywhere in the media and on social networks, the display of wealth and travel of all kinds by celebrities on Instagram is becoming more and more problematic with their fans. If some still try to defend flights of a few minutes by invoking security reasons, the reactions are generally divided between indignation and mockery.
Publishing this data shows once again, if need be, the gulf between the recommendations and restrictions applied to the majority of the population and the outrageous overconsumption of a minority. Yes, it can give the impression that the effort must be made not for the common good and future generations, but to allow a handful of people to do anything.
But will this be enough to divert from the cult of wealth and fame, when these individuals sometimes have several million subscribers on social networks? “We need to develop a counter-discourse that shows that this model of consumption is inept and that it ruins the chances of our children to live in a livable world, explained Matthieu Auzanneau of the Shift Project to The Pathfinder last March. Promoting overconsumption is criminal. »
To pollute less, it would therefore not be necessary to limit oneself to personal shame but to bring about a profound change in mentalities. If these celebrities are irresponsible people who think they are above climate change, why admire them? More than following their private jets, we should perhaps simply stop following them… Quite simply.
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