The world’s leaders clearly demonstrated that they “get it” by flying their private aircraft to Copenhagen. Time is money and the actual total cost of a travel event is the most important factor when making travel decisions. The U.N. estimated that 40,500 tons of carbon dioxide would be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference and 90 percent of that would be generated by flights bringing delegates and very important people to the conference. Obviously these are people who care about the environment and carefully chose their mode of transportation for overall impact, not just a contrived carbon use calculation.
There is a very good reason that most of the world’s leaders arrived on government-owned jets. As an example of their recognition of the value of a leader’s time, security issues, and the true cost of travel, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's spokesman Harish Khare when asked about the Prime Minister’s visit on his private jet to Copenhagen stated, "This prime minister is the last person in India or maybe even the world to do anything for effect. It'll be a normal visit, like any other visit by the prime minister." The president of the United States also demonstrated his commitment to the philosophy of “Time is Money” by traveling on Air Force One. Likewise, French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled on his special Airbus and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traveled on a presidential jet nicknamed "Aerolula."
In recognition of just how valuable these leaders and their entourage’s time is, environmentalists at the conference made no issue concerning the carbon footprints from more than 100 world leaders. Even Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who is famous at home for giving his citizens green advice traveled on a private jet from Oslo to Copenhagen in preference to the time wasting shuttles that make the hour long run between the two Scandinavian capitals.
Only Asad Rehman, spokesman for the environmental group Friends of the Earth, provided a somewhat sour note stating that "There is an obsession by world leaders to be able to come in here with big entourages on their special airplanes, land at the airport and be driven in big limousines, with bigger entourages," he said. "What they should be looking at is how they could travel here with the minimal carbon impact that they can have.” In my book, Mr Rehman does not understand the value of time. Luckily Susan Burns, the chief executive officer of the Global Footprint Network, a California-based sustainability research institute, pointed out that it would be wrong to scale back negotiations over concerns about carbon emissions, especially with so much work to be done.
"They should have a Copenhagen every month until they figure this out," Burns said. "We need to spend our carbon very wisely. And getting world leaders together and locking them in a room while they get this done is one such investment, as is investing it in the economy of the future." Now there is someone who understands the value of face to face business meetings and the “now imperative.”
Of course it is easy to point a finger at climate summits and their thousands of delegates which are normally held in far off and hoidy-toidy locations like Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro. The last big climate conference in the forsaken “Hell hole” of Bali only used roughly 47,000 tons of carbon which is hardly more than a major European city uses in a day. And, if you really want to get work done its not going to happen without air-conditioning! Also, by using private aircraft, the worlds leaders and more important delegates were able to optimize their schedules cutting down on the idling limos waiting in subzero temperatures to shuttle delegates between their hotels and the conference center.
On top of that, there are many opportunities to offset carbon emissions as the Danish government is doing by offsetting the rest of the meetings emissions by investing in a program to upgrade antiquated brick kilns in Bangladesh with the help of the World Bank. As conference president Connie Hedegaard stated: "...the project will result in significant environmental improvements for the local community, where particle pollution from the existing old brickworks is clearly visible."
Emulating the worlds most concerned leaders by chartering aircraft to reduce your carbon footprint and optimize your effectiveness should be a goal for every concerned citizen.
http://www.france24.com/en/node/4952420
