Whatever the accounting method, it must be recognized: the climate weight of private jet trips of a few wealthy people is tiny, negligible. According to estimates by the Ministry of Transport, in 2019 it only had less than 0.1 % of France’s greenhouse gas emissions. Prohibiting this mode of transport would not change anything or almost in the national climate assessment and would have the sole effect of unnecessarily annoying a small minority of personalities, while weakening a hundred thousands of direct or indirect jobs, and destroying an activity that represents, According to the sector, an annual turnover of around 29 billion euros.
Overview the conversation, fix the orders of magnitude, put figures on the problems: it is with the appearance of a rational approach to the question that the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, A first step swept away the controversy with a back of hand. Private jets are “clearly a very limited problem in terms of climate impact, she said, on August 30, on France Inter. That environmentalists make a fight how they are next to the plate . “
A few days later, reacting to the controversy opened by the words of the PSG coach Christophe Galtier – ironic on sailing tanks that club players could use to replace their transport in private planes -, M me pannier-runacher adjusted his speech on the scale of the outcry, this time believing that “the PSG answer is not up to” the climate question, and calling on the club “to grab very seriously from this subject “.
displeased misunderstanding
Why such a turnaround? At first, controversy could be understood as an instrumentalization of the climate crisis, by environmentalists, intended to stigmatize the splendor of the lifestyle of the most wealthy. But in a second step, the fact that a footballer as adulated as Kylian Mbappé is also the target of popular indignation – while high -level athletes are almost always escaping criticism on their remuneration – dissipated this misunderstanding.
What may seem a truism may have, in reality, of a deep upheaval in perception of social inequalities. They are no longer only defined by the distribution of wealth in society, but also by the power of destruction of the environment mechanically associated with this wealth. However, there is a big difference between these two ways of considering socio-economic inequalities. On the one hand, there is no limit to the quantity of wealth produced and distributable; On the other there is only a limited carbon stock to be issued to avoid destroying a common good, namely the earth’s climate.
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