Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk visited British Columbia by private jet this summer, according to the Vancouver Sun.
He appeared to be visiting a resort owned by Tesla board member James Murdoch. James is also the son of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Musk's jet was purportedly tracked by the Bluesky account elonjet.net, showing him to have flown from San Jose, California, to Vancouver. Next, he seemed to take a plane to the isolated coastal community of Bella Bella. There, he, one of his children, and a woman apparently boarded a helicopter, presumably headed to the nearby Nascall Bay resort.
Besides being arguably distasteful displays of wealth, luxuries like private jets contribute disproportionately to the amount of heat-trapping pollution in our atmosphere. One estimation by Oxfam suggested that two jets owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos create as much pollution in a year as the average Amazon worker would in 207 years.
Private jet pollution went up 46 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to a separate study. All of this heat-trapping gas contributes to the rise in global temperatures and exacerbates destructive weather patterns, such as floods and droughts. Due to the structural and agricultural damage it can cause, this extreme weather can, in turn, drive grocery and housing costs higher and higher.
Musk has earned ire from some for his previous involvement in the Trump administration, which has impacted the Tesla brand. Continuing to use polluting private jets while standing to gain handsomely from the growth of the environmentally beneficial electric vehicle industry may invite more backlash.
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Meanwhile, EVs remain a vital piece of the puzzle for the future of transportation and the overall clean energy transition. To further combat unsustainable travel, some jurisdictions have taken action to incentivize low-impact travel options. France has banned short-haul domestic flights, for example. Spain has also imposed similar restrictions.
Commenters on the British Columbia subreddit were thoroughly unhappy to see the world's richest man traipsing through the area.
"Run him out of town on a rail," one wrote of Musk.
"These people who are hell-bent on screwing the environment and seek out places to enjoy the environment that is still pristine," replied another.
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