Bill Gates bids for private jet operator - one month before he releases climate change book

[Leongsam]

dailymail.co.uk

Bill Gates bids for private jet operator - one month before he releases climate change book
Rachel Sharp

7-9 minutes


Bill Gates has been accused of hypocrisy after entering a bid to buy the world's largest private jet operator, just one month before he releases a book preaching about climate change.

The Microsoft boss's company Cascade Investment entered the bidding war for Signature Aviation Friday, teaming up with Blackstone Group to make a $4.3 billion play for the British private jet servicing company.

Cascade and Blackstone are now going head-to-head with private equity firm Carlyle, which had already made an initial takeover approach.

Gates' Cascade already owns a 19 percent stake in Signature making it the firm favorite to win the bid.

But news of Gates' pursuit of the private jet firm has raised eyebrows given the company's actions are at direct odds with his very vocal stance on climate change.
It comes just one month before Gates releases his hotly-anticipated book, 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need', where he sets out his plans for how the world can reach zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to prevent a climate crisis.

It also comes just months after he published a blog post lecturing the public that climate change 'could be worse' than the coronavirus pandemic.

Bill Gates boards a private jet at Gillette-Campbell County Airport in Gillette, Wyoming in 2010. Gates has been accused of hypocrisy after entering a bid to buy the world's largest private jet operator, just one month before he releases a book preaching about climate change

Signature Aviation handles 1.6 million private jet flights every year. And every single private jet flight emits up to 40 times as much carbon per passenger as a regular commercial flight, according to a 2019 report by aviation firm Honeywell Aerospace.

Several people were quick to point out the hypocrisy in Gates' latest business venture on social media Friday.

'Bill Gates, one of the most prominent climate change activists, has a big investment in a company that runs small airports for the mega-rich's private jets,' one person wrote.

'What does climate change have to do with flying around in private jets? Ask Bill.'

Gates releases his book, 'How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need' in February, where he sets out his plans for how the world can reach zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to prevent a climate crisis

Another objected to being lectured by one of the world's richest men on climate change while he buys up jets and jet companies.

'Let's not hear from Bill Gates about climate change please. Investing in private jet companies,' they tweeted.

'Gates is consistent: 'We cannot get to zero emissions simply—or even mostly—by flying and driving less.' Still, it should be hard to demand action on climate change *and* promote private jets,' tweeted another.

Should Cascade win the bid for Signature, any deal is likely to still be in the works when Gates' book is released on February 16.

The book aims to educate people about the need to work toward net-zero emissions and how individuals can help achieve this goal.

In the book's foreword, it states that Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change.

In August, the billionaire philanthropist warned in a blog on his Gates Notes site that 'as awful as this pandemic is, climate change could be worse.'

'A global crisis has shocked the world. It is causing a tragic number of deaths, making people afraid to leave home, and leading to economic hardship not seen in many generations. Its effects are rippling across the world,' Gates wrote.

The Microsoft boss's company Cascade Investment entered the bidding war for Signature Aviation Friday, teaming up with Blackstone Group to make a $4.3 billion play for the British private jet servicing company

'Obviously, I am talking about COVID-19. But in just a few decades, the same description will fit another global crisis: climate change.'

Then, in December, the billionaire released a plan he claimed for how the US can take the lead in the fight against climate change.

'[We] need to revolutionize the world's physical economy - and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion of ingenuity, funding, and focus from the federal government. No one else has the resources to drive the research we need,' he said.

His plan includes a $25 billion increase in spending on clean energy research while he hit out at the fact that Americans spend more on gasoline in a single month than the government spends on such research.

This isn't the first time Gates has been slammed for his double standards around the climate change agenda.

While Gates, who has four of his own private jets, has previously claimed 'I don't think there is anyone doing more' than himself on tackling climate change, he has also admitted his planes are his 'guilty pleasures'.

A 2019 study by Lund University in Sweden found that Gates had the biggest carbon footprint of a group of 10 celebrities known to frequent private jets.

Researchers estimated that he took a whopping 59 private jet flights in 2017, travelling 343,000 km and producing a staggering 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
By comparison, the average person produces around 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
DailyMail.com reached to Gates Notes for comment.

Gates with Indigenous Peoples Representative Tuntiak Katan at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019. Gates has previously claimed 'I don't think there is anyone doing more' than himself on tackling climate change

Michael Bloomberg in 2017 for the One Planet Summit. A 2019 study by Lund University in Sweden found that Gates had the biggest carbon footprint of a group of 10 celebrities known to frequent private jets

Despite the perceived hypocrisy, Blackstone and Cascade are said to be in advanced talks with Signature about their proposal that involves a cash offer of 3.81 pounds per share.

The offer will be made through Brown Bidco Ltd, a newly incorporated company which will be 70 percent owned by Blackstone with Cascade holding the rest.
Signature said this was Blackstone's sixth proposal, after it first made a bid last February.


Cascade and Blackstone must announce a firm intention to make an offer or walk away by January 14.

The bid for the travel company comes as commercial airlines have somewhat grinded to a halt amid the pandemic, as borders shuttered, travel bans were issued and consumers were told to stay home.

But while major airlines have been hard hit and are struggling to stay afloat, private jet operators have fared better as wealthy passengers sidestep travel rules and jet off around the world.

 

[syed putra]

Bill gates can use bio- kerosene jet fuel for those planes. Preferably palm oil based.

 

[Leongsam]

But while major airlines have been hard hit and are struggling to stay afloat, private jet operators have fared better as wealthy passengers sidestep travel rules and jet off around the world.

Rich People Have Always Been Assholes During Plagues

Emily Alford
3/06/20 1:45PM
•
Filed to:coronavirus


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Image: Wellcome Collection

When the first waves of plague swept medieval Europe, the disease killed both the rich and the poor indiscriminately. In July 1348, King Edward III of England’s 12-year-old daughter died on her way to Spain to marry King Pedro of Castile. And though he was still mourning, the king threw a giant tournament at Westminster in the fall, despite instructions from clergy and doctors that moderation and abstinence were the key to survival. Nearly 672 years later, rich people still want their travel and amusement even amid coronavirus fears, and in typical fashion, they’re doing everything they can to make sure sickness remains the province of the poor.




During the plague, the first round of which lasted from 1347-1351 and wiped out somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of Europe’s population, those who could afford it adopted a plague-time slogan of sorts: “cito, longe, tarde,” which translates to, “flee soon, go far, come back late.” As servants were left behind to clean the houses of the absent aristocracy, risking infection and dying at rates even higher than that of the general population, the wealthy made their wills, specifying guardians for children and dowries, and got the hell out of town. Even rich people’s plague deaths were attended by doctors and religious officiants, while reports abound of those left in cities screaming while being enclosed alive in body bags bound for the plague pits. Almshouses were quite often attended only by clergy, who blessed the dying, while physicians fled with the wealthy.

By the 16th century, Charles de Lorme had invented the bird-beak plague mask. The beak was stuffed with herbs and wormwood to filter out the bad smells thought at the time to spread bubonic plague. To his wealthy patrons, including Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, he prescribed “red broth” made partially of antimony, a metal used to induce vomiting, which was believed by the Romans to be conducive to good health. de Lorme obviously thought so too, as he said of the broth: “qui plus en boira, plus il vivra” or, “the more he drinks, the more he lives.”

And now, as coronavirus causes global panic—though, to be very clear, it is nowhere remotely as dangerous as the plague—the New York Times reports that rich people are once again scrambling for expensive remedies of questionable efficacy while fleeing the infected. The 21st century version of retreating to one’s Italian villa seems to be barricading oneself in a Hamptons mansion. The new court physician is the concierge doctor, and the new plague mask is the high-end, sold-out Urban Air Mask 2.0, miasma-blocking herbs replaced by “cutting-edge filter technology with timeless Scandinavian design,” the company’s website reads. Gwenyth Paltrow recently posted a selfie wearing the $65 modern-day plague mask en route to Paris, though doctors say they’re likely ineffective, as the masks are intended to prevent sick people from spreading coronavirus, not protect well people from catching it.

Rich people are once again scrambling for expensive remedies of questionable efficacy while fleeing the infected.


But that message hasn’t yet seemed to reach the modern-day aristocracy. Los Angeles concierge physicians say they’ve been bombarded with calls from actors, agents, directors, and other rich people asking for help getting specialty N95 masks, assuming that because they cost more, they must be better:

“It’s interesting because people say, ‘I need the N95 mask. It costs more. It sounds like it’s heavy-duty. We’re Hollywood people, we can afford it,’” one doctor told The Hollywood Reporter before explaining that the masks are hard to use and ineffective. But the higher price tag and exclusivity continue to appeal.

During plague outbreaks, cities hired armed guards to stand outside houses, ensuring whole families, whether they were sick or not, remained trapped inside to die. Medieval doctors believed the bodies of contagious people to be full of poison, and the apostemes on the bodies of the victims, engorged with pus, were thought to be the body’s way of expelling these poisons. Physicians advised that the best way to avoid infection was to leave the sick for dead and flee, as they often did themselves. In his fourteenth-century guide to escaping pestilence dedicated to the Giangale-Visconti, a member of the ruling family of Milan, contagion theory pioneer Pietro Curialti da Tossignano wrote: “it is safer to move to a region where there has never been an epidemic...since the ‘reliquiae’ will remain and, acting like a ferment, will infect those who come into the locality.”

In her exploration of the ways wealth influenced who fled and who died in the plague years, “Shutt Up: Bubonic Plague and Quarantine in Early Modern England,” Kira L.S. Newman writes, “Quarantine and its effects were not classless, and its implementation was not always in the name of public health,” an assessment that already seems equally true in the age of coronavirus. While the wealthy traveling in the age of coronavirus have not yet bought guards to make sure no poor people can cough near them, they are in the midst of leaving the sick behind to travel in sterile comfort to places where infection has not yet spread. The Guardian reports that executives have charted “evacuation flights” from China and Southeast Asia. One family chartered a private plane from Hong Kong to Bali to avoid coronavirus, according to PrivateFly chief executive Adam Tiwidell. Unlike commercial flights, where the Times says every stray cough from three rows back sounds like a ghostly greeting from Typhoid Mary,” rich people’s private planes are made safer with money:

“Each aircraft is equipped with a protective healthcare and sanitary equipment kit for passengers and crew, should it be required,” Twidell told the Guardian. “The health of crew members is being monitored very closely, including temperature checks before every flight.”

And like Edward III who refused to let a bit of plague spoil a good time, the wealthy are forgoing their vacations to Italy, where over 3,000 cases of coronavirus and more than a hundred death have been reported. But yacht rentals for the Meditteranean and the Bahamas are booming. “It totally makes sense,” Jennifer Saia, president of a yacht charter company in Rhode Island told the New York Times. “You’re keeping your family contained in a very small, should-be-clean environment. And going from your car to your F.B.O.” — meaning fixed base operator, or private jet terminal — “to your private jet right onto the tarmac. And from there, right onto your yacht, and not having to deal with the public.”

To the rich, perhaps it does make complete sense that the first concern in the face of coronavirus fears would be that their vacation or scheduled jousting tournament proceed uninterrupted by other people’s deaths. And if history is any indication, it probably won’t be too long before they begin hiring others to remain behind and risk exposure while protecting their stuff. In the plague years of 1593 and 1603, parish records from London show that the majority of adults who died of bubonic plague were servants. In Ben Jonson’s 1610 play The Alchemist, a wealthy gentleman leaving his London home behind to wait out the plague in the country instructs the servant left behind to mind the house to “breathe less and farther off.”

Historically speaking, it’s not surprising that rich people are already fleeing potentially contaminated breath in cities on yachts and private jets, falsely believing expensive face masks will veil them from exposure while the regular people are left behind fighting in a Walgreen’s aisle for the last bottle of hand sanitizer. It’s simply interesting to note how quickly we revert to our feudal roles the moment aristocracy gets scared.

 

[Leongsam]

Coronavirus lifestyles of the rich and famous: how the 1% are coping
While the rest of us face the pandemic, the wealthy are donning face masks, boarding private jets and heading for the hills

• Coronavirus – latest updates
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Flight is the super-rich’s preferred response to the pandemic, but only if they don’t have to rub shoulders with the plebs. Photograph: Flashpop/Getty Images

Edward Helmore
Fri 13 Mar 2020 07.00 GMT
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 18.15 BST

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Coronavirus may have no respect for social, racial or professional boundaries, but even during a pandemic, as F Scott Fitzgerald observed, the very rich “are different from you and me”.


The family lockdown guide: how to emotionally prepare for coronavirus quarantine

Read more


While most of us are panicking about having enough toilet paper or whether we can work from home those with the means are making other arrangements.

Private aviation
Given the choice of fight or flight, flight is the preferred option of the wealthy. Private jet travel is booming, with as much as a tenfold increase in bookings, allowing travelers to avoid large hubs identified as entry-points for coronavirus and avoid contact with strangers.

The need to solicit business has been overtaken by demand, according to Jerod Davis, owner of Southern Jet. “The request lines are just crazy right now,” Davis told Slate.

Location, location, location
It helps if you have somewhere safe to go. New Zealand is top of the list for Silicon Valley billionaires such as Facebook investor Peter Thiel, who owns 193 hectares (477 acres) of the country’s pristine South Island.


A well-stocked country home is also a good option. Escaping to your house in the country, to Idaho or Gloucestershire, is one of the most popular 1% ways of avoiding the contagion, says PR Mark Borkowsky, who attended a notably sparse memorial service for photographer Terry O’Neill in London on Tuesday.

“In this country, people are heading for the hills,” Borkowsky said. “At the memorial, not one person was handshaking and I’ve never seen so many Aesop hand-cleansers in one room. Lots of people were either heading out of London, or those that hadn’t were either talking about doing so or self-isolating.

“It feels like a phoney war: what do we do to avoid it [coronavirus] and how do we keep away from people,” Borkowsky said.

Who you know, not what you know
It also helps to have friends in high places.

The Trump administration, which initially downplayed the pandemic, has lost no time making testing available to political loyalists.

Two congressional Republicans, Matt Gaetz of Florida and North Carolina’s Mark Meadows, the incoming White House chief of staff, were both tested after exposure to a Covid-19 carrier at the annual conservative conference near Washington DC last month.

Both said they were exhibiting no symptoms of illness, rendering their testing in apparent defiance of the government’s own recommendations that healthcare providers prioritize tests for hospitalized patients who are exhibiting coronavirus symptoms, elderly and those with underlying health issues.

Face masks
If the jet is grounded, or you have to mix with hoi polloi, there’s always a face mask.

The US surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has urged the public to stop buying them. “Seriously people,” Adams wrote on Twitter, “STOP BUYING MASKS!”

That didn’t stop Naomi Campbell from boarding a plane in Los Angeles decked out in a full white protective suit and wearing a 3M N95 mask – the hospital-grade mask that doctors and coronavirus experts say are in short supply.

Campbell’s less than chic new look followed a a selfie by Paris-bound Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a since sold-out “urban air mask” by a Swedish company, Airinum. Paltrow starred in the prescient 2011 drama Contagion about a deadly viral outbreak.

“Paranoid? Prudent? Panicked? Placid? Pandemic? Propaganda?” wrote Paltrow, who now apparently refers to herself in the third person. “Paltrow’s just going to go ahead and sleep with this thing on the plane. I’ve already been in this movie. Stay safe. Don’t shake hands. Wash hands frequently. ”

Money can’t buy you love
But, sadly, wherever the super-rich go, they take themselves with them.

Quarantine may prove too much for wealthy couples forced to stay home and deal with intimacy issues rarely encountered by the jet set.

Mitchell Moss, who teaches urban policy and planning at New York University, told Bloomberg News: “This is going to destroy the marriages of the rich … All these husbands and wives who travel will now have to spend time with the person they’re married to.”