Harry and Meghan have been accused of ‘enormous hypocrisy’ after flying back to California from the Queen‘s Platinum Jubilee in a ‘Russian oligarch-style’ private jet.
The eco-preaching Duke and Duchess of Sussex returned to their £11million Montecito mansion with their children Archie and Lilibet on a gas-guzzling Bombardier Global 6000 before the grand finale of the Jubilee pageant even began on Sunday.
Bombardier is an ‘ultra long range’ 13-passenger private jet which comes with its own ‘private stateroom’ that features a flatbed and can travel more than 6,000 miles without stopping. It is not clear who paid for the £160,000 flight.
Climate experts believe the journey will have resulted in ten times more carbon being emitted than if the Sussexes had taken a commercial flight. The royal couple’s flight from Farnborough to Santa Barbara will have emitted nearly 60 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to chartered flight provider Paramount Business Jets.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement objective of keeping global warming below 2C, each person’s carbon budget should be no more than 2.1 tonnes per year – meaning Harry and Meghan exceeded this by nearly 15 times in just one flight.
As the Sussexes also flew into Britain on a private jet, and assuming it was the same aircraft, their overall return trip would have exceeded the annual limit by nearly 30 times. By comparison, the carbon emission rating of flying from Heathrow to LA in an economy-class seat on a commercial aircraft is 1.4 tonnes, according to climate consultancy Cube6.
The Queen’s grandson previously described climate change as one of the ‘most pressing issues we are facing’, and told Oprah Winfrey during the couple’s bombshell interview last year: ‘We need to do better about stopping or allowing the things that are causing so much harm to so many of us at the source, rather than being distracted by the symptom.’
