William & Kate's Royally Appalling Carbon Footprint
AP Photo.
After eleven days of jet-setting around North America, William and Kate returned to London yesterday. During their working PR trip, Los Angeles welcomed the royal couple who engaged in an exhausting weekend of endless handshakes and humanitarian events. Prior to their L.A. visit, the royal do-gooders planted a tree in Ottawa.
But the one item they forgot to checkoff on the "do good" list was their fuel consumption. Though the couple flew commercial back to Heathrow, the majority of the trip involved transport via private jet, usually an Airbus A130, according to The Daily Beast. Using nearly four gallons of fuel for each air mile, these jets rack up an embarrassing amount of carbon-dioxide emissions.
"For dignitaries with means, there is no excuse not to make all their travel—flights, hotels, car transport—carbon neutral while supporting new technologies, such as wind and solar energy and reforestation projects,” says Eric Carlson, founder of the CarbonFund.org Foundation.
After carefully tallying the total emissions using a respected standard of 21 pounds of carbon dioxide for every gallon of jet fuel burned, The Daily Beast has estimated a grand tally of 250 tons of CO2. To put this number into perspective, over a dozen Americans use this same amount over the span of a year. 250 tons of carbon dioxide in under two weeks - yikes.
“It's extremely important for people in the public eye, like William and Kate, to lead environmentally sustainable lives,” Carlson adds. “People look to celebrities and dignitaries for leadership—their actions are reported on far more than the people working on an issue day in and day out—and what they say and do can make a big difference.”
Nonetheless, the Duke and Duchess's charitable actions towards humanitarian and environmental projects may be enough to offset their unsustainable transportation patterns in the eyes of citizens worldwide (though probably not in the eyes of any environmentalist).
