A few weeks ago, I rode up Chair 7 with a nice older man. He told us about his trek from San Diego which included several delays. The delays were not due to commercial airline travel. Instead, he was “forced” to land his private jet in Grand Junction because EGE was already at capacity. He blamed guests attending Jeff Bezos’s sushi party for the busy air space.
The day before this interaction I was out skinning. Late December felt like April. Snow was melting, I was in a t-shirt, and it felt wrong. My mind wandered. I started wondering if my future children would get to learn how to ski or experience a white Christmas. At the rate things are going, I’m worried they will hear about these things only secondhand.
I think of myself as environmentally conscious. I ride my bike to work, reuse, recycle, compost, and try to support companies with pro-environment initiatives. And it all feels futile when I hear about private jets pouring in for a sushi dinner.
According to a recent article in Nature, some private jets emit more C02 per hour than the average human emits in a year. If one hour of one flight wipes out the efforts of an individual over an entire year, it makes it hard to feel like bringing my reusable bags to the grocery store really matters.
How do we reconcile that private-jet-traveling individuals are critical to supporting tourism in our valley with the fact that if we continue our current trajectory, the industry they are coming for will cease to exist as we know it? Is there a way to hold large corporations and wealthy individuals accountable to offset emissions so that individual efforts at a local level aren’t erased by one private jet flight?
Support Local Journalism
Kristin Thomas
Minturn
