President Barack Obama made a Saturday climate change speech at Yosemite National Park, with a motorcade 40-deep spewing the same CO2 into the air he was railing against.
Not only was there a 40-car motorcade, there were also four helicopters and, of course, Air Force One to account for (leaving out the army of police cruisers needed for any presidential visit).
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that for every one gallon of gas burned there is about 20 pounds of CO2 produced, meaning that if his 40-deep motorcade only burned one gallon of gas each, they just introduced 760 pounds of new CO2 into the atmosphere — and that isn’t even accounting for the helicopters, jets, and police cruisers needed to get the president to Yosemite.
Light traffic at #Yosemite gate, save for line of #CHP vehicles towing motorcycles (for #ObamaInYosemite motorcade?) pic.twitter.com/v8RNCFPsQi
— Tim Sheehan (@TimSheehanNews) June 17, 2016
As for Air Force One: It’s about a 2,372 mile trip from Washington D.C. to Castle Airport in Merced county California, and Air Force One burns five gallons of fuel for every one mile travelled — according to a piece published by The Daily Mail in 2014 — meaning Obama’s round trip to Yosemite and back to D.C. (4,744 miles) burned 23,720 gallons of fuel.
Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator (GGEC), The Daily Caller News Foundation figured 23,720 gallons of fuel used converts to 464,912 pounds of CO2, which is the equivalent of providing 22 homes energy for an entire year; burning 225,000 pounds of coal; 488 barrels of oil consumed; or 8,621 propane cylinders used for home barbecues.
Obama is far from alone in what appears to be hypocrisy in spreading the climate change message. In May, Leonardo DiCaprio — another warrior for the climate change cause — took his private jet on an 8,000 mile round trip from France to New York, where he picked up the ‘Big Fish‘ environmental award for his role in water preservation, then promptly took his private jet back to France. The Daily Caller News Foundation, in a story published on May 23, figured the 17,000 gallons of fuel Leo burned would be the same as burning 169,400 lbs. of coal, or the same as powering 19 homes for a year.
Another major player in the climate change debate has his own carbon hypocrisy to account for. In a piece ran by ABC News in 2007, former Vice President Al Gore was shown to have a $30,000 electric bill or 221,000 kilowatt hours. For reference, the average consumption per year is 10,656 kilowatt hours, meaning Gore used almost 20 times as much electricity than the average person whom he implores to curb their CO2 emissions.
“If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn’t care,” Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research told ABC News, “but he tells other people how to live and he’s not following his own rules.”
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