Flying to save the planet

The Herald reports:

Green Party co-leader and Climate Change Minister James Shaw spent the most of any government minister on international travel in the last quarter, according to expenses released today.
Shaw’s $73,771 Cabinet-approved travel between October 1 and December 31 last year eclipsed Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s $54,487 and Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ $49,378.
The Greens’ three ministers and under-secretary spent a total of $121,194 on international travel, $22,948 on domestic air travel, and $18,639 on surface travel. That figure includes VIP transport and the travel of their spouses and staff.

Saving the planet requires a huge amount of first class air travel it seems.

A spokesman said ministers’ air travel emissions were offset when they flew Air New Zealand or one of its Star Alliance partners.

This means that some tree planting company got some money from Air New Zealand. But you know what, those newly planted trees won’t actually soak up much in the way of carbon emissions for 30 years. And the Greens tell us that we must stop emitting now. So the hypocrisy is huge.

So how much carbon did James Shaw cause? Well according to My Climate, his trip to Poland would have been 25.1 tonnes and San Fran 12.2 tonnes. So that is 37.3 tonnes in just three months.

The average emissions per capita in the world in six, so James Shaw in three months did more emissions than six people did in a year – so his rate of “pollution” was 24 times greater.

And he says that’s all okay because he paid for 600 trees to be planted somewhere and in 30 years time they’ll have soaked it all up. Never mind that James says we’re all doomed if we’re not carbon neutral before then.