Carbon pollution from high flying rich in private jets soars

By SETH BORENSTEIN
Updated 11:07 AM EST, November 7, 2024

Carbon pollution from private jets has soared in the past five years, with most of those small planes spewing more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in about two hours of flying than the average person does in about a year, a new study finds.

About a quarter million of the super wealthy — worth a total of $31 trillion — last year emitted 17.2 million tons (15.6 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide flying in private jets, according to Thursday’s study in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment. That’s about the same amount as the 67 million people who live in Tanzania,

Private jet emissions jumped 46% from 2019 to 2023, according to the European research team that calculated those figures by examining more than 18.6 million flights of about 26,000 airplanes over five years.

Only 1.8% of the carbon pollution from aviation is spewed by private jets and aviation as a whole is responsible for about 4% of the human-caused heat-trapping gases, the study said.

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