Canada private jets pass a yearly footprint in minutes

Canada private jets put out more carbon dioxide in twenty minutes than the average Canadian emits in a full year, according to Oxfam Canada. The group released the finding in Ottawa on Tuesday as part of a new global report on climate change and inequality. Private jets that left Canada last year emitted 333,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Oxfam Canada says the scale of that flying sits awkwardly beside the costs ordinary households now pay for wildfire smoke, flooding and rising insurance bills. The Canada private jets finding lands days before the federal budget, which is why the group timed the release for this week.

What the Canadian numbers show

Canada private jets made more than seventy-one thousand departures from the country last year, according to the analysis behind the report. In eleven minutes, those jets emitted as much carbon dioxide as a person in the poorest half of the Canadian population emits in a year. The richest tenth of one percent of Canadians, about thirty-nine thousand people, emit fifty times more carbon dioxide per person than someone in the poorest half of the population, and twenty-seven times more than the average Canadian. The average Canadian emits about thirteen tonnes a year, while a person in the poorest half emits about seven tonnes.

The report ties those emissions to a summer of damage across the country. More than five thousand wildfires burned about four and a half million hectares this year and forced more than thirty-three thousand people from their homes, including more than eight thousand people from First Nations communities.

More than two hundred deaths were attributed to extreme heat in Montreal and Toronto in the first two decades of this century. The heat dome in British Columbia five years ago caused more than six hundred heat-related deaths. Record rain in Ottawa on Canada Day flooded about four thousand five hundred homes. Statistics Canada reports that insured catastrophic weather claims reached a record eight point six billion dollars two years ago, and that home and mortgage insurance premiums rose forty-five percent over the six years ending last December. Canada private jets are the focus of the report because their emissions arrive in minutes rather than building up over a year.

What Oxfam wants from the budget

Oxfam Canada wants Ottawa to use the November budget to put taxes on Canada private jets, extreme wealth and fossil fuel profits. The group points to the end of the luxury tax on private planes and boats in last year's budget. The government had projected that the aircraft and vessel portion of that tax would bring in about thirty-one million dollars a year. Nirvana Mujtaba, a policy and advocacy specialist with Oxfam Canada, said people flying private produce a large share of this pollution and should help pay for the damage. The budget is the first place to start, in the group's view, because it sets tax policy for the year ahead.

The Canada private jets numbers are part of a wider report called Disaster Divide, which looks at how climate disasters deepen inequality. Globally, the richest tenth of one percent produce more carbon pollution than the poorest three and a half billion people combined, according to Oxfam. Private jets around the world emit more carbon pollution in two seconds than a person in the poorest half of humanity emits in a year. The report also names more than two hundred corporations that profit from industries driving climate breakdown and from disaster preparation, recovery and reconstruction. BlackRock and Vanguard are invested in more than nine in ten of those corporations, with combined investments of more than one trillion dollars.

Oxfam is asking governments meeting at the United Nations climate summit in Antalya to make wealthy polluters pay and to stop profiteering from climate disasters. The group also wants Canada to spell out how renewed climate finance will be spent, with grants favoured over loans and a larger share for adaptation and for loss and damage. The summit runs in November, days after the federal budget, which gives Ottawa two near-term chances to act on the report. The Canada private jets figures come from a private jet emissions tracker built by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Private Jet Accountability Project, combined with emissions inequality data from the Stockholm Environment Institute. Readers can find the full Canadian release through Oxfam Canada, and the global findings through Oxfam International.