I’ve written a piece for Mail+ about the galactic levels of hypocrisy being exhibited by the billionaires, politicians and celebrities attending COP26. Here is an extract.
If hypocrisy were a type of fuel, the 20,000 attendees at Cop26 in Glasgow would have solved the climate crisis at a stroke.
Yesterday, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos flew in to Glasgow in his £4 8million Gulfstream jet, leading a 400-strong parade of private aircraft transporting billionaires to the climate conference.
The jets, which included one carrying Prince Charles and his entourage from Rome, will disgorge more carbon into the atmosphere in a few days than 1600 Scots burn through in a year.
And the reason these plutocrats are flying in to Glasgow, of course, is to wag their fingers at ordinary people, insisting we reduce our carbon emissions or face the wrath of the next generation.
“It’s one minute to midnight,” Boris Johnson warned, neglecting to mention that he has taken more than 20 private flights since becoming Prime Minister.
I would say this means irony is dead, but climate change hypocrisy is a bit like the Black Knight in Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Every time you think these rich and powerful do-gooders have inflicted a mortal wound on their moral credibility, they carry on as if nothing has happened.
Perhaps the ultimate example of these double standards is Sky chief executive Dana Strong. The broadcaster is one of the main sponsors of Cop26 and Ms Strong has not been shy about lecturing her rivals for not doing enough to promote the green agenda.
So is she leading by example? Not exactly.
For the first six months of her term as chief executive, Dana Strong ‘commuted’ to Sky’s London headquarters from her home in Philadelphia via private jet. That meant she completed the 7,000-mile round trip multiple times before she relocated to London in June.
Worth reading in full.
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