Oct

The Hypocrisy of the World Wildlife Fund’s Eco Tour

Posted by admin Published in Auto Blog, Auto News

Lush plant life and exotic wild animals. Formal dinners and luxury accommodations. Twenty five adventurous days in 11 different countries, all reached by private jet. Sounds like a great vacation, certain, but additionally an expensive exercise in hypocrisy by the
World Wildlife Fund.

The organization does an admirable job protecting the world’s flora and fauna from the affect of human development and global climate change. We applaud so noble a cause, but it is tough to take the WWF seriously when it organizes a fund raising trip that will spew 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide shuttling well-heeled donors around the globe on a private jet.
The WWF says
the tourallows adventurous travelers — those who can pony up the $64,950 ticket price, besides — to “touch down in some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see the top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans.”

Good thing they aren’t planning to visit any glaciers.

While the whole thing is way by the top, it’s the private jet that really gets us. The 88-seat, luxuriously appointed jet will transport passengers on a whirlwind tour with stops in such far-flung places as the Amazon, Easter Island, Chile, Malaysia, Laos, Nepal and London.

We’re not certain what kind of plane the WWF is using — the sales pitch says only that it is “a specially outfitted private jet.” But an
excellent pieceby Steven Milloy in
JunkSciencenotes that flying the 36,000 mile route in a Boeing 757 would burn about 100,000 gallons of jet fuel and produce more than 1,200 tons

of CO2. Milloy says that’s the same as putting 1,560 SUVs on the road for the three weeks the eco-adventurers are jetting around the world. He uses the
WWF’s carbon footprint calculatorto estimate it would cost $44,000 to offset the emissions — though the
WWF’s brochure(.pdf) doesn’t say anything about offsets.

It gets even harder to take once you read the WWF’s
mission statement, which states it is committed to “protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species;
promoting sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources; and promoting more efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution.”

Um, hello?

We disagree with a lot of what Milloy has said in the past — he’s committed an
entire pageof his website to debunking the myth of climate change — but in that case he’s spot on. An organization that
implores us to do our partby carpooling, embracing flourescent bulbs, replacing our old appliances and taking other steps toward eco-friendliness shouldn’t be taking 75 wealthy donors on a 25 day pollution-fest.

The WWF does good work, and like every other non-profit, it needs money to carry out that work. But a fund raising trip like that is a poor notion. There must be a better way.

Post updated 10:00 a.m. PST.
Photo by
Flickr user
Tambako the Jaguar
.
Original post by Dave Demerjian