OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
During an appearance on Fox News, “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe criticized ultra-rich billionaires who flew their private jets to Switzerland to lament the emissions gap and the need to phase out coal.
The billionaires attended a conference called the World Economic Forum.
Rowe accused the liberal billionaires of “hypocrisy” for blaming the “everyday guy” for “all of the trouble in the world.”
“These are billionaires, and very, very, very wealthy people who fly privately to this resort to basically blame the everyday guy for all of the trouble in the world,” Rowe said.
“I just don’t know how a reasonable person can see through the hypocrisy to even for a moment seriously consider the validity of anything you just played,” he said in reference to the billionaires claiming that we need to “close the emissions gap” and end the “addiction to fossil fuels.”
Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Rowe agreed that it’s crazy to make fossil fuels the enemy right now.
Rowe said, “To marginalize and vilify the very thing we are all so completely and totally reliant on, that’s a recipe for crazy making.”
“We’re at war with the very things that we need,” he said.
A study of last year’s private jet trips to the annual World Economic Forum in Switzerland found the carbon emissions was equal to “about 350,000 average cars.”
The study determined that 53% of the private jet trips were short-haul flights below roughly 470 miles. The individuals could have easily taken a train instead.
38% of the analyzed flights were for “ultra-short distances” equaling 310 miles or less. The shortest trip was approximately 13 miles. This shows how little attendees actually care about reducing their own personal carbon footprint.
Private planes accounted for 1,040 trips to the airport.
Roughly one of every two flights into the ski town in Davos, Switzerland was a private jet.
Greenpeace official Klara Maria Schenk also slammed the hypocrisy of the event.
She said, “The rich and powerful flock to Davos in ultra-polluting, socially inequitable private jets to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors.”
