Okay, I may have exaggerated that number. A little.
This article comes to us today from the UK Telegraph: Greenpeace executive flies 250 miles to work. It documents the story of one Pascal Husting, who was hired by Greenpeace International in 2012 to be the International Program Director. There is a slight problem. You see, Mr. Husting lives in Luxembourg and the GPI's office is in Amsterdam. So, Greenpeace pays about 250 Euros ($340) to fly him round-trip twice a month ($8,160 a year) between his home and the office. According to the article, his traveling has produced 7.4 tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to 17 barrels of oil, or 714 gallons of gasoline. Over those two years, it works out to be 357 gallons a year. I generally consumed about 277 gallons a year, commuting 10 miles each way 5 days a week and 50 weeks a year. So, he's more, but not a lot more. Here is where the hypocrisy comes in. According to the article,
...despite [Greenpeaces] campaign to curb "the growth in aviation", which it says "is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change”.
So, Greenpeace is against commercial aviation flights, except when it's their executive doing the flying. Kind of like Al Gore (he invented the Internet, you know) who preaches across the globe for us to conserve resources and cut back on fossil fuel consumption. All the time while flying in private jets across the world to preach this notion. His house in Nashville uses more energy in a month than my house uses in a year. How much house does he need?
Now, while he is at home in Luxembourg, he spends most of his time on video conference calls, so I can respect that. I don't find this flying him around out of line with a good business practice. In my last position, we hired a Medical Doctor who lived in another state and he was unwilling/unable to move to this state. So, the company flew him in for a week once or twice a month, until the company had to cut back on all travel.
It's their stance on airline flights, then sneaking him in under the radar that exposes their own hypocrisy. The article said that in about 2-3 months he will start taking the train once a month, rather than flying twice a month. I wonder how much (if at all) his carbon footprint will be reduced when he switches to 12 hours on a train from 3 hours on an aircraft.