Rarely bad joke has caused so much excitement. The time seems to have come for the private jet to join the Rolex and other Ferraris in the pantheon of gold-plated cookery. Christophe Galtier and Kylian Mbappé most certainly deserve the volley of green wood that has been falling on them for a week. If some seem to discover on this occasion that our stars in millionaire shorts are very little in touch with reality, the interest of this controversy lies elsewhere.
Taken as a whole, private jets represent only a tiny fraction of emissions from air transport, which itself produces barely 3% of global emissions. Yet it is in terms of individual carbon footprint that the private jet has become unbearable for us. On the Paris-Nantes route in question, traveling by TGV produces 80 times fewer emissions than its air counterpart – in economy class. A gap four times greater in business, and almost 14 times greater in private jets.
The idea that a tiny caste of ultra-rich can emit more in an hour than a French household in a month is obviously inadmissible at a time of climate and energy crises. Convincing PSG players that taking the TGV is not a medieval torture will only reduce French emissions very little. But the strength of the symbol illustrates the relevance of the concept of individual carbon footprint when it comes to gauging the degree of responsibility in the face of climate change.
This notion, so obvious when we look up the ladder of wealth, too often becomes foreign to us in the other direction. How many speeches to explain to us that a country like France, accounting for only 0.6% of global emissions, should not have to make any efforts as long as the Chinese and Indian giants have not themselves decarbonized their savings? A French household, however, emits six times more than its Indian equivalent. The gulf is certainly less vast than that which separates us from the jet-setters of the Parc des Princes. The legitimate feeling of injustice in the face of the outmoded energy privileges of a few remains nonetheless shared.
A contrast that compels us
Of course, the entire carbon footprint of a French household does not result solely from individual choices. A good part results from the modes of production, transport infrastructures, urban organization of the territory, which escape the control of each one. These systemic factors come to limit the comparison with the footballing excesses of the hour. But faced with the inhabitants of emerging countries, it is difficult to argue that our standard of living does not result from a collective choice of very carbon-intensive industrial development.
It is this same discrepancy which partly explains why many emerging countries, India in the lead, refused to commit more strongly to the Glasgow agreement last December. Just as we demand the example of our wealthiest celebrities, emerging countries are asking rich countries to support them in their carbon-free development through transfers of wealth and low-carbon technology. Without these compensations, demanding from them efforts identical to ours would lead to a climatic injustice finally quite comparable to that which threw the yellow vests into the streets four years ago.
It is unreasonable to condition our climate action on the efforts of countries which, on the contrary, have a strong need for economic development. This development can and should be far less carbon-intensive than Western industrialization has been – but immediate emission reductions cannot be imposed on countries whose economic take-off has in fact only just begun. We can never stress enough how low the per capita emissions of the major emerging countries remain. The annual emissions of an Indian in 2022 are comparable to those of a Frenchman in 1875; those of a Nigerian to the French issues per head of 1850. In a sense, this contrast obliges us. We have to believe that we are always the Kylian Mbappé of another – small consolation no doubt.