I cannot tell you how delighted I am that Prince Harry has decided to become woke. Today he made a speech in which he highlighted the urgent need for us to cut down on unnecessary travel. Harry, his wife Meghan, and their royal entourage flew to Amsterdam (because going by sea would take too long), in order to attend the launch of an eco-tourism project. While there, Harry made an inspiring plea to the rest of the world to do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprints.
Harry was unfairly criticized at the event for his use of private jets. To this, he responded: ‘I came here by commercial. I spend 99 percent of my life traveling the world by commercial.’ Figures published by the royal household showed 207 trips last year were made by helicopter, and with a mere 56 flights on specially chartered planes. The helicopter trips were for short hops and cost a mere £15,000 ($18,128) each time. So, at a total of $3,752,496 in taxpayer’s money, this really was value-for-money. In evaluating the carbon footprint of a helicopter, a Bell 206 will use around 16 gallons of fuel to travel 58 miles, while a van would burn around five gallons to cover the same distance. So honestly, 207 journeys of say, 250 miles by helicopter, using a total of 14,276 gallons… is the equivalent of one of us traveling 165,603 miles in a small pick-up truck. Given that the average UK driver travels approximately 8,000 miles per year… in order to offset the royal family’s annual helicopter carbon footprint, each year we should nominate one person to give up driving for 21 years. Hey presto! Problem solved. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Obviously we’d also need to factor in the 56 chartered flights per year and given that a medium-sized jet consumes 233-336 gallons per hour, that person would more likely need to quit driving for 164 years (I’m thinking the ‘fuel debt’ could be passed down to future generations), but that’s a small price to pay for the comfort of a handful of people for one year. Especially if those people are educating us on how much the rest of us need to save fuel because saving the planet is incredibly important.
We could use the same method in the US to offset the carbon footprints of Hollywood stars. Why should they have to give up their luxuriously convenient lifestyles when preaching to us about saving the planet? Their lives are far too important. In my opinion, the lower classes very rarely contribute as much to society as Beyonce, Madonna, or James Franco. I say, the less significant a person’s job is, the less they should be allowed to travel. Makes sense. Every Hollywood and music industry star should have a person from the lower orders nominated each year using some kind of postal lottery to offset their personal carbon impact on the world. It would be an honor. Picture Garrett, a 24-year-old failed medical student. He works in Chick-fil-A. Now imagine the delight on Garrett’s face as he receives a letter in the mail one day telling him he has been twinned with Cher to be her official 2021 Carbon Footprint Offloader. Sure, he’ll never be allowed to drive a car for the rest of his life, his passport would be revoked and he’ll be forced to eat only food he grows himself on an allotment plot, but he will live this way in the knowledge that Cher can live her glamorous lifestyle while telling the rest of us to live more frugally for an entire 12-month period completely guilt free thanks to Garrett’s lifetime of sacrifice. A happy bonus of this is that if Cher lives for another 15 years, there will be 15 other Garretts, all dutifully living a blissfully pure carbon-neutral life which will surely be a comfort. They’ll never be able to actually meet each other of course, but they will know they are out there.
So, come on plebs. Start doing your bit and stop being so disgustingly selfish. We’ve a planet to save!
