It sure seems like climate scoldery and hypocrisy go together like peas and carrots, doesn't it? I've already mentioned the laughable hypocrisy of having an eight-mile, four-lane highway bulldozed through the precious Brazilian rainforest so that the attendees can travel smoothly and in air-conditioned comfort from Belem, Brazil's airport to the conference venue. I've mentioned the laughable hypocrisy of government officials and non-government scolds jet-setting off to the conference.
Leave it to the United Kingdom's Energy Secretary, Labour pol Ed Miliband, to do them all one better. He jetted off from Britain to Brazil for this thing, not once, but twice.
Energy secretary Miliband flew to Brazil ten days ago to meet up with PM Sir Keir Starmer and Prince William in Rio de Janeiro before they all flew onto Belem where the COP30 climate summit is taking place.
Mr Miliband then flew back to the UK last Sunday - but the Net Zero zealot is set to return to Brazil, making an identical trip again, this Saturday.
While in Brazil the first time he was spotted dining out at a luxury rooftop restaurant with views over Rio above the £1250 a night five star hotel he was staying at - with fellow eco campaigners.
By the time he has returned to Britain for a second time his four-leg plane journeys will have cost the taxpayer an estimated £22,000 – and created some six tons of CO2 emissions.
This amounts to the average annual carbon footprint for a whole household in the UK across an entire year.
Wow. Just... wow. Even among the parade of utterly blatant hypocrisy surrounding this event, Ed Miliband managed to distinguish himself.
Read More: Report: Trump Admin to Mostly Pass on UN Climate Summit
This goes well beyond mere hypocrisy. This is utter disregard for the taxpayers. This is an arrogant disregard for even the pretense of his claimed priorities. In two trips, the climate scold Miliband has generated the carbon footprint of a typical British household for an entire year, and that's just the air travel. Add to that the presumed limousine ride - I mean, he and his entourage didn't walk from the airport to the venue - in that humidity, are you kidding? Not to mention the five-star hotel, the gourmet meals... Self-awareness rating, zero.
And, of course, his people justify it with the same old story: "He's important."
A source at the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero justified Mr Miliband’s globe trotting double trip, saying: ’It’s a lot easier for everyone to meet in person – trying to organise a summit of this scale on Teams or Zoom just wouldn’t work, it would be chaos.’
I'm sorry - no, actually, I'm not - but businesses and governments alike do business online, on Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, whatever. It's routine. This could have been done that way, too, and honestly, what are they accomplishing with this summit? Without buy-in from India and China, not to mention the United States, the only thing the attendees here will accomplish is to give each member a bad case of tennis elbow from all the mutual back-slapping.
At least the Conservatives got it right:
But the Tories said he should focus on reducing people's bills rather than flying thousands of miles to spread the word on climate change.
He should, yes. But, as is so often the case with the left, it's all style over substance.
Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points.
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