President Biden’s newly appointed climate czar, John Kerry, took a private jet to Iceland in 2019 to receive the Arctic Circle award for climate leadership, Fox News learned.
Kerry defended his high-pollution race at the time, calling it “the only choice for someone like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle” in an interview obtained by Fox News. The incident had not previously been reported in the American press.
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who led the Arctic Circle Roundtable, criticized Kerry for traveling to the event in a private jet, the Icelandic outlet RUV reported.
Kerry received the award, which took the form of an iceberg sculpture, for being “a consistent voice that pressures American officials to commit to environmental issues,” the vehicle noted.
Icelandic reporter Jóhann Bjarni Kolbeinsson confronted Kerry at the event about his choice of transport, asking, “I understand that you came here with a private jet. Is that an environmental way of traveling?”
John Kerry speaking at the ceremony in 2019.
(Arctic Circle via YouTube, Archive)
Kerry responded by stating that it was the only way. “If you offset your carbon – it is the only choice for someone like me, who is traveling the world, to win this battle,” said Kerry.
“I negotiated the Paris Agreements for the United States,” he added, referring to the multilateral climate agreement signed when he was Secretary of State for President Obama.
“I have been involved in this fight for years. I negotiated with [Chinese] President Xi must bring President Xi to the table so that we can reach Paris. And, I believe, the time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t navigate the ocean. I have to fly, meet people and get things done, “said Kerry, avoiding the fact that he chose a private jet instead of a commercial flight.
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“But what I’m doing, almost full-time,” he continued, “is working to win the battle against climate change and, in the end, compensating and contributing my life to it, I’m not going to be put on the defensive.”
Private jets are estimated to emit more than 40 times more carbon per passenger than commercial flights.
It is unclear how Kerry is offsetting his carbon footprint, as he said, but flight records indicate that his family’s private jet spent more than 20 hours in the air last year – culminating in about 116 metric tons of carbon emissions. carbon.
For comparison, a March 2018 report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that the typical passenger car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. That calculation assumed a car that drives about 11,500 miles per year, with a fuel economy of around 22.0 miles per gallon.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment.
As Fox News noted earlier, the Kerry family owned a private charter jet company, from which the longtime Democrat seemed to benefit financially. Also in 2013, the financial disclosure of staff in his executive branch showed Kerry having “more than $ 1,000,001” in assets for the charter company Flying Squirrel LLC through his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune.
THE JOHN KERRY FAMILY’S PRIVATE JET EMITTED 116 METRIC TONS OF CARBON LAST YEAR
Kerry’s 2009-2012 financial disclosures also showed that amount. In his 2013 disclosure, the former secretary of state reported between “$ 50,001- $ 100,000” in rent and royalties for the company. That number was over $ 1 million in its 2012 form and between $ 100,001- $ 1,000,000 for 2013. Other disclosures showed rental income of more than $ 1 million for 2011, “$ 100,001- $ 1,000,000” for 2010 and “$ 100,001- $ 1,000,000” for 2008.
The revelations about Kerry’s massive carbon footprint came as Democrats considered proposals to reform the country’s energy economy, with costs potentially skyrocketing for families and individual Americans.
Biden’s climate proposal is estimated to be at least $ 1.7 trillion. That may grow, however, depending on how Democrats negotiate with him in Congress, where progressives like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been adamant about approving the ambitious New Green Deal.
During the campaign, Biden said he would use the Green New Deal as a framework for his climate plan, although his proposal would cost significantly less than other plans that adopted that framework. Regardless, Biden’s plan aims at the kind of transformation across the economy advocated by more leftist members of his party.
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This included achieving zero net emissions by 2050, which the Heritage Foundation said would cost the economy millions of jobs, thousands of dollars in lost family income and erased trillions of the country’s gross domestic product.
The conservative non-profit organization used the National Energy Model of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to predict the impact of high carbon rates aimed at achieving net emissions of greenhouse gases.
Not only did the model fall, but it also failed to approach the goal outlined in the GND. The closest Heritage achieved was a 58% reduction in emissions, achieved through a carbon tax of $ 300 – taxes above $ 300 broke the EIA model.
He estimated that just a 58% reduction would, by 2040, cost the economy $ 15 trillion in lost gross domestic product and an average of 1.1 million jobs a year. The average family of four would also see a total loss of income of $ 165,000, or almost $ 8,000 a year.
Within weeks of taking office, the Biden government had already cost Americans jobs by revoking the federal license to build the Keystone XL gas pipeline. TC Energy, the company that owns the pipeline, warned on the day of inauguration that this “would directly lead to the dismissal of thousands of union members”. Rob Darden, CEO of the Distribution Contractors Association (DCA), said in the same way that completing the pipeline “would have created 10,000 well-paid American union jobs”.
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Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., And Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., say the cost of inaction on climate change is unsustainable. According to Sanders, solutions like infrastructure and investments would also boost the United States economy. The Biden campaign website predicted that its climate response could create 10 million “well-paying jobs”.
Sanders had previously warned that, without action on climate change, the US “would lose $ 34.5 trillion by the end of the century”. He also predicted savings of up to $ 70.4 trillion over 80 years, “avoiding climate catastrophe”.