Isramart : Bloomberg the Bigfoot (in Carbon)

Isramart news:
The average New Yorker uses one-half to one-third the electricity of other Americans. Our carbon footprints are just 29 percent of people who live outside the five boroughs, and City Hall has practical plans to reduce even that amount by nearly a third over the next two decades. No wonder that this month, in a talk at the New York Academy of Science, Rohit Aggarwala, the mayor’s chief adviser on sustainability, said the city was “the most environmentally efficient society in the United States.”
So it makes perfect sense that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is going to Copenhagen on Monday and Tuesday to address the international conference on climate change: his administration is working to head off problems that will not emerge until long after he is gone.

A strong case can be made that when it comes to energy and climate issues, Mr. Bloomberg is the most visionary public official in the country.

And a strong argument can also be made that on a personal level, he ranks among the worst individual polluters ever to hold public office.

Mr. Bloomberg owns a helicopter and two jets, both Falcon 900s. He flies everywhere on private jets, by far the least efficient form of transportation on or above the earth. He takes his jet to Bermuda many weekends. He has flown around the globe on it. He uses it to go to Washington. He is planning to get to Copenhagen for the climate conference by private jet, too.

The carbon math works out like this: by taking his Falcon 900 to Denmark, Mr. Bloomberg will be responsible for the release of 37 times the carbon dioxide than if he and his entourage flew on a scheduled commercial flight. The calculations were done at my request by Dimitri Simos, the developer of software used by the airline industry to assess aircraft emission and performance. Mr. Simos said that a Falcon 900 carrying eight people from Newark to Copenhagen would produce 21.6 tons of carbon dioxide. By adding eight people to the scheduled Scandinavian Airlines flight, the aircraft, usually an Airbus A330-300, would produce an additional 0.58 tons of carbon dioxide.

Mr. Bloomberg’s routine trips to Bermuda are even more carbon costly: the private jet produces 130 times more emissions than going commercial. On those jaunts, Mr. Simos said, the Falcon produces 4.3 tons of carbon dioxide; putting another two people on an American Airlines Boeing 757-200 that flies to Bermuda would produce only 66 more pounds.

This is not Bloombergian hypocrisy; it is a paradox, shared by most of humankind. I’ve lived within a block or two of a subway station since birth, yet owned a car since I got a driver’s license. There is a long list of public figures — from movie stars to politicians to journalists — who preach conservation for everyone else, while living in mega-homes and flying in Gulfstreams. It is probably not a good idea for the rest of us to look down our noses at people who cannot resist such temptations until we can afford them ourselves.

In the case of Mr. Bloomberg, his addiction to private jets is striking because in so many other parts of his life, he appears fastidious about shared resources. The lighting and electronic gear in his family foundation building use 20 percent less energy than typical offices; the foundation recycles rainwater to irrigate a green roof; even most of the construction and demolition debris were recycled.

Moreover, you can watch generations of elected officials — at all levels — come and go without having the nerve, wisdom or generosity to grapple with tomorrow’s tough problems. You see just the opposite with Mr. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, a set of strategies to make the city habitable and more efficient in 2030, complete with goals that must be met each year.

Those who have flown in private jets say they have much to recommend them — none of this arriving at the airport two hours ahead of time and taking off your shoes to get to the boarding gate. You drive up to the hangar, get on, and the flight attendant brings a glass of wine and a plate of sushi. The business aviation industry says that its jets are getting more efficient and that they account for a tiny fraction of human-made carbon emissions. They are very expensive to operate, but even when Mr. Bloomberg travels on official business, he always picks up expenses for himself, his staff and the police security detail.

As it happens, Mr. Bloomberg is also a great public evangelist for high nutritional standards, but shakes salt on his pizza and loves a Big Mac.

There is a lesson here for everyone, whether they are in Copenhagen or New York or elsewhere. Human beings will produce as many tons of carbon emissions as they can afford. And we’ll have the fries with that.