For years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Party leaders have long vowed to address pollution and climate change. During the 2020 election, they set a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in the United States.
“Democrats know the climate crisis is the essential crisis of our time, threatening public health, jobs and the economy, national security and values,″ Pelosi said during a news conference in June 2020, where she outlined her pledge to eliminate almost all pollution.
But Pelosi has a dirty little secret.
In 2020 and 2021, while she was telling voters they have a “moral” obligation to address pollution, she spent a fortune of donor cash on private flights all across the country.
In a little over one year Pelosi managed to spend over $500,000 on private jet flights, Fox News reported. Pelosi’s campaign cut checks for $437,000 to the Advance Aviation Team in Virginia between October 2020 and December 2021. She also spent $65,000 in donor cash at Clay Lacy Aviation in California.
Both companies provide private jets to the rich and elite.
Despite her frequent, luxury private flights, Pelosi has insisted to the public that she is leading the fight against pollution.
“For me, it’s a religious thing,” she said in November 2021 after another private jet flight to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
“I believe this [Earth] is God’s creation, and we have a moral obligation to be good stewards.”
Experts have noted for years that private jets emit significantly more carbon dioxide per passenger than traditional commercial airliners. Because those emissions are released so high up, some experts say the impact of those emissions is 1.9 times that of pollution at ground level. Others say the environmental impact of private jets is actually 5 to 14 times worse than traditional commercial flights in terms of carbon dioxide.
Private jets accounted for just 4 percent of air travel in 2016, but those flights emitted more carbon dioxide than the entire nation of Denmark did that year.
“A huge amount of fuel is used during takeoff and landing of a plane, no matter how many people you have on board. So an already polluting mode of transport (commercial aviation) becomes even worse (with private jets),” Dr. Debbie Hopkins told the BBC about private jet flights to the Glasgow climate summit.
But don’t expect Pelosi to mention her frequent luxury getaways.
She’ll be too busy lecturing everyday Americans that they need to pay more taxes to reduce pollution.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
The Horn editorial team