I offered a tip for Paris Climate Conference attendees yesterday: pick up the phone.
If they were really scared of climate change, I reasoned, they would try not to make a big, fat carbon footprint by jetting in for the conference. Now, the Daily Caller has some details on just how big a carbon footprint our president made by going to the conference:
President Barack Obama may warn that carbon dioxide is causing global warming, but his flight to Paris to join other world leaders at the United Nations climate summit emitted more CO2 than driving 72 cars for a year.
Obama’s Paris jaunt will send more CO2 into the atmosphere than 31 American homes‘ energy usage for an entire year. The president’s trip is equivalent to burning 368,331 pounds of coal or 797 barrels of oil, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon footprint calculator.
Just one leg of the president’s Sunday trip to Paris emitted 189 tons of CO2 after travelling 3,855 miles and burning 19,275 gallons of jet fuel, according to Daily Caller News Foundation calculations based on past presidential flights. Obama’s return flight to Washington, D.C., would double the amount of CO2 burned to 378 tons — more than 72 cars driving for a year.
For this kind of environmental damage, you could probably bomb an ISIS oil field instead.
Haven't the big time diplomats and elected leaders ever heard of Go To Meeting?
But there are attractive perks that you can't get with Go to Meeting, and I suspect that these may have factored into their thinking. The Washington Post reports on the gastronomie of climate change:
As working dinners go, President Obama’s meal Monday night in Paris with French President Francois Hollande, Secretary of State John Kerry and others wasn’t too shabby.
No cartons of takeout — instead, the gang fueled up after a long day of climate talks at L’Ambroisie, the three-Michelin-starred temple of gastronomie in the Marais neighborhood.
Per the Michelin Guide, the ornately be-chandelier-ed dining room is known for “incomparable classicism and an immortal feast for the senses.”
No wonder these folks don't want to let their fingers do the dialing.