The eco-preaching Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been accused of ‘enormous hypocrisy’ after they returned from the UK to the US in a ‘Russian oligarch-style’ private jet.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex flew back to their Montecito mansion with their children Archie and Lilibet an hour before the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee ended.
The couple decided to go back to their Montecito mansion on a gas-guzzling Bombardier Global 6000, an ‘ultra long range’ 13-passenger jet featuring a flatbed and ‘private stateroom.’ It can also travel over 6,000 miles without stopping.
However, climate experts believe that the travel will have caused ten times more carbon being emitted than if the Duke and Duchess had decided to take a commercial flight.
According to chartered flight provider Paramount Business Jets, the flight from Farnborough to Santa Barbara will have emitted almost 60 tonnes of carbon monoxide.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement objective of maintaining global warming under 2C, each person’s carbon budget should not exceed 2.1 tonnes a year. This meant that Meghan and Harry exceeded by almost 15 times in their one-way flight.
As the couple flew to the UK on a private jet, and assuming they used the same aircraft, their overall trip would’ve exceeded the annual budget by almost 30 times.
Prince Harry previously described climate change as one of the “most pressing issues we are facing.”
In an Oprah interview, Harry said: “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.”
Royal expert Tom Quinn, the author of Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle, has accused the Sussexes of ‘enormously hypocrisy.’
Speaking to The Times, Quinn said: “They pontificate about helping people and the planet and then they take private jets. They tell people to look after the environment and then they don’t look after the environment themselves. It’s enormously hypocritical.”
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