Last week, Starbucks announced that its newly-appointed CEO, Brian Niccol, would report to the company’s Seattle headquarters three times a week, just like other employees. The requirement suggests that even senior executives are not above company policies at the world’s biggest coffee chain. But there is a catch here.
Unlike other workers who come to the office via public transport or cars, Niccol, who lives more than 1,600 kilometres away in California, will get a company-owned jet to travel to Seattle.
The job perk has exposed Starbucks’ double standards. While the company, a self-proclaimed leader in environmental sustainability, encourages its customers to use paper straws and cups, it has offered to Niccol a mode of transportation which is recognised as a major source of carbon emissions.
Impact of private jet travel on climate
In just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tonnes of carbon dioxide. Moreover, these jets are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes (per passenger), and 50 times more polluting than trains.
In 2022, jet travel, whether via large commercial jet or small private jet, was responsible for about 800 million tonnes of CO2. To make matters worse, private jet use has consistently increased in recent years. The number of private jet flights in Europe in 2022 rose by a whopping 64 per cent, and emitted more than 5.3 million tonnes of CO2, according to a 2023 analysis by Greenpeace.
The richest are the biggest climate wreckers
But the Niccol-Starbucks controversy is not just about how private jets disproportionately damage the environment compared with other forms of transportation. It tells us that the billionaires and super-rich like Niccol (his sign-on pay package with Starbucks is worth up to $113 million, one of the largest such executive deals in corporate history) do not want to do their bit to tackle the climate crisis.
Consider this: The richest 1 per cent of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66 per cent, according to a 2023 joint investigation by The Guardian, Oxfam, the Stockholm Environment Institute and other experts. “[T]his elite group, made up of 77 million people including billionaires, millionaires and those paid more than $140,000 (£112,500) a year, accounted for 16 per cent of all CO2 emissions in 2019 — enough to cause more than a million excess deaths due to heat,” the investigation revealed.
Many of these super-rich — especially Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos — claim to have climate action high on their agenda. They are investing billions of dollars in carbon removing technologies, nuclear energy, and establishing new funds. However, such actions seem to be either superficial or an attempt to influence climate-related policies and regulations in their favour.
For instance, in 2021, Bezos gave an $18 million grant to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an organisation which assesses whether some of the world’s most prominent companies are reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the Paris agreement. Three years later, the SBTi board “unexpectedly” announced plans to allow companies to meet their climate targets with carbon offsets from the unregulated voluntary carbon market for indirect emissions, according to a different report by The Guardian.
“The move provoked internal fury. Staff and technical advisers said they were not consulted about the announcement and warned it could open the door to greenwashing,” the report said.
In 2022, the Elon Musk Foundation, along with the nonprofit XPRIZE, provided 15 groups with $1 million in funding to scale up carbon removal solutions. However, such technologies are way too expensive and are nowhere close to reaching a level where they can tackle climate change, according to experts. Some claim that carbon removal or capture solutions are just a false promise and a way for fossil fuel companies and others to keep releasing GHG emissions.
The billionaires and super-rich do not care about the climate crisis because it is not profitable for them to do so. In fact, they became rich, in the first place, by exploiting the environment. A 2016 report by the World Economic Forum said, “[T]he market mechanisms under capitalism do not provide incentives for preserving the environment. Firms are constantly threatened by market competition to cut costs and optimise profit. The environment thus falls prey to the compulsive market behaviour of the capitalist mode of production.”
Therefore, many experts suggest that higher taxes on the rich can help solve the issue. It would at least provide the much-needed funds for climate mitigation and adaptation, especially in the Global South.
alind.chauhan@expressindia.com
