The G-1 Summit held in the UK this week on June 11-13. The leaders of the seven member states will meet to discuss future epidemics from the COVD-19 epidemic and international coordination on economic policies, such as the proposed global minimum corporation tax of 15 percent. A big topic to discuss is of course climate change. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson has been widely criticized for flying from London to Cornwall in south-west England, where a summit called on world leaders to take further steps to tackle the climate crisis.
By the way, Cornwall is 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of London, about 5 hours by train. After he delivered a photo-up of himself on a private jet, he made it much easier for the public to point out the hypocrisy and at the same time drew attention to the fact that he would tell his fellow leaders to “move forward with the challenge,” and make it green.”
The prime minister told reporters in the face of criticism: “If you attack my arrival by air, I respectfully show that the UK is actually leading the way in creating sustainable aviation fuel and that this is one of the points of the ten-point plan.” Our green industrial revolution is to reach net zero as well as jet zero. The Ten Point plan includes £15 million in competition to create sustainable jet fuel, none of which involved the jet that took Johnson to Cornwall.
The emission of such short trips is surprising compared to public transport. “A flight from London to Cornwall produces about a ton of CO2 emissions, which is produced by the average family in a year,” journalist Bethany Dawson wrote on Twitter. “50 trees need to be planted to offset these emissions.”
According to the UK Government’s own statistics from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a passenger can produce 97.5 kg of greenhouse gas per 400 km journey, Business Insider reported. The equivalent version of the train could produce 17.6 kg of greenhouse gas per passenger, as well as better optics at the climate crisis summit. In 2019, climate activist Greta Thunberg traveled by boat to a UN climate summit, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from her home country of Sweden to the United States and Chile, where the summit held to avoid air travel. During this two-week trip, right-wing commentators in the UK accused him of being a hypocrite for having a plastic bottle behind him in a photo.
