He’s the climate czar for the United States of America, but his wife’s private jet takes frequent trips.
Former U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) has a Gulfstream G-IV private jet that has taken 18 trips so far this year, , as global flight tracker FlightAware reports. The private jet is owned by Flying Squirrel LLC which has the same address as the Heinz Family Foundation. Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Kerry’s wife, chairs the foundation.
The most recent flights occurred on Friday, August 6. Kerry’s private jet took a 19-minute trip from Logan International Airport to Martha’s Vineyard. The plane was on the Vineyard for about an hour. It then departed to Pittsburgh, a flight that took 82 minutes.
The U.S. State Department denied that Kerry was on any of these flights this year and would not say if it was his family members using the private jet, according to The New York Post. The State Department did not immediately reply to NewBostonPost’s request for comment on Monday, August 9.
There are also several reports saying that Kerry attended former President Barack Obama’s birthday party in Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend, but the State Department told The Washington Examiner that Kerry wasn’t at the party and that he uses the ferry to travel to Martha’s Vineyard.
Kerry’s official title in President Joe Biden’s administration is Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. It is “A Cabinet-level position that serves on the National Security Council and leads the Administration’s efforts to combat global climate change,” according to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s web site.
Critics of Kerry call him a hypocrite on this issue. Politically, Kerry advocates for reduced carbon emissions — both in the United States and across the globe. Yet, private jets are not environmentally friendly.
One four-hour flight on a private jet emits as much carbon into the atmosphere as the average person does in a year, according to the European Federation for Transport and Environment. The report also notes that 1 percent of the population causes about 50 percent of the world’s aviation emissions. In the United States, aircrafts were responsible for 3 percent of the country’s carbon emissions in 2018 and about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions among the transportation sector, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
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