“Europe is experiencing the warmest January days ever recorded and communities around the world are grappling with extreme weather events supercharged by the climate crisis,” said Klara Maria Schenk, transport campaigner for Greenpeace’s European mobility campaign in a statement. “Meanwhile, the rich and powerful flock to Davos in ultra-polluting, socially inequitable private jets to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors.
The study found that of the 1,040 private jet flights in or out of airports near Davos, 53% were shorter than 750 kilometers and 38% were under 500 km . The shortest flight recorded was only 21 km . Short-haul flights are especially polluting because airplanes are less efficient during landing and takeoff.
For the sake of comparison, the distance between Washington, D.C. and New Haven, Conn., is 305 miles and between Boston and Washington, D.C. is 440. While it is not uncommon for Americans to fly such distances, Europe has a much more comprehensive, affordable, fast and reliable train network, which serves Davos.between cities that are connected by a rail trip of less than two and a half hours.
Environmentalists are increasingly arguing that the European Union should ban such private flights. Last November, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, 700 climate activists staged a sit-in on the tarmac in front of 13 private jets preparing for takeoff, grounding all of them for more than six hours. "The superrich have got used to polluting as they please with a total disregard for people and planet, and private jets are the pinnacle of these luxury emissions that we simply cannot afford," Jonathan Leggett, one of the activists,