Despite their self-professed environmental bona fides, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the their ilk are responsible for so much carbon emissions that the average person would need a lifetime to match the amount one of them spews in 90 minutes. That's the claim from international nonprofit Oxfam, which yesterday published what it said is the first-ever study looking at the luxury transport (i.e.
, private jets and yachts) and investment emissions of 50 of the world's richest billionaires. "Oxfam's research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and - make no mistake - threatening lives," Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar said of the findings. "It's not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future - it's lethal.
" Private jets, one of the most visible and publicized ways the ultra-rich get around, are significant polluters but still pale in comparison to the impact of their other indulgences. Billionaires are "treating our planet like their personal playground [and] setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit," in Behar's words. Oxfam was able to identify private jets belonging to 23 of the billionaires it looked at for its report, and found that they flew an average of 184 times in a 12-month period, spending around 425 hours in the air.
