Akash Shendure is a Seattle, Washington-based environmentalist who created ClimateJets.org, a website that tracks the carbon dioxide emissions of private jets and examines the disparity in emissions between the wealthy and ordinary people. At the time of the creation of the website, Shendure was just 17 years old. His father is an environmentalist-energy entrepreneur. ¹

Akash Shendure claims that many owners of private jets who voice their concern for the environment and climate change were among the biggest carbon dioxide emitters, emitting as much carbon dioxide as hundreds of ordinary Americans.

Early Life

Shendure lives in Seattle. His father is an environmentalist-energy entrepreneur, which Akash credits with playing a role in his interest in environmentalism. He also points out that many peers his age also have an interest in the environment because they believe they would suffer the consequences of failing to combat climate change. ²

ClimateJets.org

Creation

Shendure decided to develop a tool that would track the carbon-dioxide emissions of the world’s wealthiest people after Twitter suspended an account that tracked Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private jet. Musk accused the creator of the tracker, Jack Sweeney, of doxing him and putting his life in danger. Musk suspended the account from Twitter and suspended journalists for sharing the tracker. ³

Shendure gleaned the identification numbers for the private jets from a database and location data for the jets from an unnamed private company. Finally, he got the information about carbon dioxide emissions data from U.S. government data. ⁴

Within weeks, Shendure was able to determine that well over 100 people who own and operate private jets emit more carbon dioxide than dozens, if not hundreds, of average Americans. The data is updated in real time. ⁵

Findings

Among Shendure’s findings were that many of the private jet owners claimed to be champions of the environment and of combating climate change and were some of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. ⁶

The largest emitter of carbon dioxide according to the website was technology billionaire Thomas Siebel. Siebel has long expressed concern about climate change and as recently as January 2023 wrote an article discussing the importance of AI in combating climate change. ⁷

The fourth largest emitter was billionaire financier and climate-change advocate Samuel Zell. Zell took more than 381 separate flights in private jets for a grand total of 795.81 hours in the air, or just over 33 days. ⁸

Shendure acknowledged and thanked some of the people on his list for funding and supporting climate research. But he still criticized the flights as unnecessary. ⁹

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