Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said there was no other way to get from an environmental ministerial meeting in Essen, Germany to Tromsø in time for his presentation of a new UN report on sustainable tourism in Arctic areas.
He'd earlier traveled from yet another meeting in Nairobi to get to Germany.
Steiner said it wasn't possible to reach Tromsø in time by a regularly scheduled flight. Although airline travel in general is considered one of the major contributors to global warming, scheduled flights are less environmentally unfriendly than private jets.
Steiner defended his choice of private jet travel by saying it was "a very little" jet, and that he had six people traveling with him.
Steiner said he bought a so-called "climate ticket" to compensate for all the extra carbon gasses his private jet trip emitted. He also said he buys personal climate quotas to compensate for all his traveling.
He seemed to realize that his private jet trip wouldn't go unnoticed in Tromsø. "With so many journalists gathered here, you can't take any chances," he laughed.
Ironic
It's an ongoing irony that the world's environmental champions spend a lot of time traveling the world themselves in polluting aircraft. When Al Gore visited Norway recently to make another of his global warning presentations, he also arrived in Kristiansand by private jet. So did several of the affluent supporters of his cause, including Norwegian environmental activist and hotel tycoon Petter Stordalen.
Norwegian readers responding to Aftenposten.no’s report of Steiner's private jet travel complained of hypocrisy among government and environmental leaders who urge everyone else to reduce travel and reevaluate their lifestyles.
"How does buying climate quotas help when the air still gets polluted?" wondered one reader. "Shall we simply be allowed to do what we want, as long as we can pay our way out of it?"
Another noted that since the state has never invested in train lines to northern Norway, travellers must continue to rely on polluting aircraft, ships and vehicles.
