Mark Zuckerberg sparks outrage after details of lavish trips come to light: 'A moral crime'

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has recently come under fire for his lavish travel practices.

In just two days, Zuckerberg's private jet released 70 tons of carbon dioxide through burning 7,254 gallons of jet fuel, LuxuryLaunches reported. 

He was reportedly flying back and forth from California and his new multimillion-dollar home in Hawaiʻi. The rising popularity of Hawaiʻi for the wealthy has driven up the cost of living in the state, sometimes pricing Hawaiians out of their homes.

A Reddit post on the r/Environment subreddit expresses the outrage that many felt from Zuckerberg's private aviation news. 

As one commenter put it: "That's … a moral crime!"

Although Meta has banned a number of accounts that track his private jet and others like Elon Musk's, other social media platforms and news outlets continue to report on their movements. 

Flying in a private jet is particularly taxing on the environment. This is because jets burn fuel from dirty energy sources.

Private jets can release as much pollution into the atmosphere in two hours as an average person would in about a year, PBS reported. 

Some in the comments of the Reddit post talked about balancing the pollution with solar energy. The transition to solar energy can mitigate some of the impacts of human-caused climate change, but, as the commenters noted, these efforts are less effective if the wealthy make choices that set back the benefits.

As Nature Communications: Earth and Environment noted, private aviation is an energy-intensive practice that only a fraction of the world is involved in. 

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Celebrities and wealthy individuals like Zuckerberg could reduce some of their pollution by choosing lower-impact travel options. 

Many have been angry at Zuckerberg's displays of wealth over the past few years, such as when he purchased a $300 million yacht. 

Beyond the displays of wealth, his frequent private flights that add heat-trapping pollution to the atmosphere are detrimental to the work that many climate change activists are doing around the world.

"People like him don't care about the environment. … As long as he is wealthy, he is happy," one commenter lamented.

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