As America is dragged kicking and screaming into a future powered by windmills, solar panels, and hope, the rich and powerful continue to lecture regular Americans about climate change. While most regular people aren’t interested and may not necessarily buy into the gloom-and-doom outlook from the climate alarmists, that hasn’t dissuaded Joe Biden from choking out the fossil fuel industry and throwing bags of cash at green energy initiatives.
As energy prices rise, making it harder for middle-class and poor Americans to heat their homes and put gas in their tanks, the rich and famous still maintain that the earth is burning and we all must make sacrifices. Whether it is electric cars that are expensive and unreliable or insane regulations and taxes on everything from gas stoves to home heating, Americans are feeling the heat from the green energy warriors.
Thankfully, we have the wealthy to guide us on our journey to a clean future. Or maybe not. In reality, the richest among us are usually the biggest polluters as well. John Kerry, Greta Thunberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, and others like to lecture the working class on climate, but when it comes down to it, they aren’t practicing what they preach.
Kerry, Thunberg, DiCaprio, and others don’t walk to climate summits, and they sure don’t bike anywhere, as Pete Buttigieg displayed when he was famously caught hopping on his bike for cameras after riding in a gas-guzzling SUV to one of his first cabinet meetings.
One of the biggest offenders happens to be one of the richest people in the galaxy. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns a $500 million dollar “superyacht” that allegedly generates thousands of tons of carbon emissions annually, according to a study.
University of Indiana researchers were responsible for the study that points a finger squarely at the Amazon founder for his egregious contribution to climate change. This is despite Bezos previously pledging to spend billions of dollars in the fight against the boogeyman of climate change.
Bezos’s yacht is so big it has to have a “support yacht” with a helipad to follow it when it sails. The 417-foot yacht produces a reported 7,154 tons of greenhouse gasses annually, not counting whatever the baby-yacht generates. This is roughly 447 times the entire annual output of Joe Sixpack driving his kids to school and going to work.
In May, Bezos got engaged to his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, and the couple sailed the behemoth polluter around Europe. Bezos has voiced plans to give away the majority of his wealth before he dies, but as one outlet reported, plans and actual actions are often disconnected.
Indiana anthropology PhD candidate Beatriz Barros said about the super-rich: “But because they are so rich and so powerful, they feel like they are entitled [to travel in carbon-producing superyachts], whereas you and I should drive less, should eat less meat.”
It is a high-stakes game of “do what we say, not what we do,” as the rich and powerful seek to preserve their opulent lifestyles while forcing regular people into electric vehicles and green energy. It is unlikely that the general population will embrace the green agenda as long as those telling us to refuse to practice what they preach.
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