Happy Earth Day, everyone! Hope you’re all enjoying your…composting…and your…carbon offsets? I used aerosol hairspray today, so I’m not even going to pretend I observe this non-holiday.
President Obama does, however. Today, he boarded his private jumbo jet and burned down to the Everglades to deliver a blistering take on his political opponents who aren’t doing enough to stop people from flying their private jets everywhere. Also, something about protecting fragile ecosystems.
In anticipation of Obama’s Earth Day stump speech, the media started publishing annoying articles about Air Force One’s carbon footprint. How inconvenient, right?
When asked about the jet’s effect on the environment, White House press secretary Josh Earnest crumbled under the weight of his boss’s sanctimony.
Watch the madness unfold:
Here’s the transcript, via Rabble Writer:
MR. KNOLLER: On the Everglades trip, does the President risk undermining his message when he flies to the Everglades on a 747 hundreds of miles to make a statement about climate change? (Laughter.)PEANUT GALLERY: He could drive. (Laughter.)MR. EARNEST: It’s a provocative question.UNIDENTIFIED: Take a van.MR. EARNEST: But, no, he doesn’t. The President believes that there are important changes that we can make to reduce carbon pollution in this country, and we can do it in a way that will be good for our economy. That is precisely the case that the President will be making at the Everglades. And he’s looking forward to the trip.MR. KNOLLER: Does he try to minimize the carbon footprint that he leaves whenever he goes anywhere?MR. EARNEST: Well, obviously, the Department of Defense and the Presidential Airlift Group at the United States Air Force is responsible for the President’s transportation. So you can talk to them about any steps that they may have taken. I can say as a general matter that the Department of Defense has acknowledged that climate change does pose a national security threat to the United States. And there are a lot of practices that the Department of Defense has taken to try to reduce their carbon footprint. I don’t know how that intersects with the use of Air Force One, but you could check with the Air Force on that.
Not amused:
In the scheme of things, this pressure probably won’t make much of a difference. Celebrities and politicos are going to keep using their private planes to jet off to destination speech venues to complain about things that harm the environment; but we’ll keep writing about it because every time we ignore the hypocrisy that runs rampant on the left is another opportunity for the left itself to leverage the husk of its ideology against conservative policies.
We can’t afford that—especially not with the elections just around the corner.
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