Virtue signalling
Some extremely wealthy man drives an expensive car (which he probably did not even pay for) to a meeting where he helped divide the world up for profit.
Let's not pretend these people care a jot about climate change.
Only one half of SAP’s joint CEOs managed to travel to the World Economic Forum 2020 in Davos by relatively environmentally friendly means, the other opted to jump on a jet plane. Yesterday it emerged that Christian Klein made the 430km journey from corporate HQ in Germany to the Swiss enclave via a hydrogen-electric powered …
"SAP took its appearance at WEF 2020 to publicise its commitments to reduce its environmental impact by joining the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership. The software firm says it is planning to launch the next phase of its Plastics Cloud helps businesses move to single-use plastics and invest in materials collection infrastructure."
Emphasis mine--rather missing the point, aren't they?
On long hauls, modern airliners with very high passenger loads can easily rival or exceed the fuel economy of the best ICE/hybrid cars. On average, they seem pretty comparable, especially when considering the amount of driving done with only 1 or 2 passengers. Of course, I'm guessing this guy's flight wasn't particularly packed.
Davos? That would be the one where an angry child spewed garbage and like him or not Trumps version was much better-
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51189430
Is it better for the environment to get on a mass transit vehicle already making the trip for many others, or to buy an expensive car? I dont care about someone buying a car I hope he likes it, but the idea such a thing is for green reasons doesnt seem to add up. Like most of the Co2 nonsense.
" although the vehicle has zero emissions at the tail-pipe, Klein would need to keep driving it and driving long after Davos to offset carbon emissions produced during its manufacture"
I've heard this claim a few times and it's weird. Very few people buy an electric (hydrogen, hybrid, etc) car just for the kicks and not because they actually need a car. If they didn't buy the electric etc car, they would have bought an ICE one. So the savings in carbon emissions it makes should be compared to the difference between what emissions it takes to produce an electric car vs what it takes to produce an ICE car*. Similairly if comparing to train journey you have to calculate the emissions of train + track production; to airplane add plane manufacturing and parts transport
*by the way that's something I don't really know anything about. Anyone know how much more, if anything at all, are the manufacturing emissions cost of electric car vs ICE car?