protesting against private jets, scientists denounce an “untenable” system that favors the “ultra-rich”

To protest against private jets, they summon the “hard” sciences, the “soft” sciences and paper airplanes. They are astrophysicists, economists, biologists, ecologists… Thirty scientists from the Scientifiques en Rébellion collective demonstrated on Thursday 10 November, in front of the headquarters of Dassault Aviation, on the Champs-Elysées, in Paris, as part of a day of mobilization organized in ten countries to demand “the ban on private jets, the taxation of grand thieves”in order to “make the big polluters pay”.

While COP27 is in full swing in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), scientists are multiplying these “actions of non-violent civil disobedience”. In Berlin and Munich, in the showrooms of the luxury brands BMW and Porsche, or on the tarmac reserved for business flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, they aim for the symbols of a way of life that their work has determined to be incompatible with the fight against global warming.

“We are not in the dynamic of telling individuals to put on turtlenecks.” Ddoctor in ecology at the University of Rennes, Kaïna Privet is not in her first activism. After Munich, in Germany, it is in Paris, close to the Champs-Elysées, that she presents herself today, white coat on her back and megaphone in hand. “Sobriety efforts must also come from above”, she continues. High, very high, in the high spheres, among the users of a means of transport reserved for an elite : in 2018, an industry report called “The Jet Traveler” estimated that the average jet owner has a fortune of 1.5 billion euros. And this, while “80% of the world’s population has never set foot in a plane, and I’m not even talking about those who have ever flown on a private jet”notes the ecologist.

At the individual level, “individuals of high socio-economic status contribute disproportionately to emissions and have greater reduction potential”, write the IPCC authors in their latest report. But in detail, in France, greenhouse gas emissions from private jets alone represent around 0.1% of the country’s territorial emissions. “It’s not much, but compared to the small number of people behind these emissions and the services rendered to society by this use, it is enormous”points out the sociologist Milan Bouchet-Valat.

The figure, seemingly derisory, carries a high symbolic value, at a time when citizens are called upon to make efforts. “A four-hour flight [en jet] emits more than one European in a year”thus details the collective, which has chosen to qualify the users of these planes as “big thieves”.

“It is not individuals, wealthy people as such that we are aiming for, but a model of society”, specifies for her part Ariane Lambert-Mogiliansky, economist and associate researcher at the Paris School of Economics. According to her, the speeches relativizing the impact of private jet flights echo those who defended the watering of golf courses while France was going through an episode of drought of unprecedented magnitude this summer. Because, she says, “global warming is exacerbating inequalities everywhere : between countries, and within countries, where it is the poorest who suffer from the explosion of their energy bills. A system that satisfies the interests of 0.01% of the population is untenable.”

These inequalities between the richest, whose way of life is the most polluting, and the poorest, who suffer the hardest from the consequences of global warming, are also on the menu of discussions at COP27. They are embodied in particular in the question of the financing of “losses and damage”, that is to say the damage suffered by developing countries due to the rise in temperatures, responsible for the multiplication of extreme meteorological episodes, such as as droughts and floods.

But among scientists gathered outside Dassault Aviation headquarters, pessimism reigns over the outcome of the climate summit. : “The governments of developed countries had promised in 2009 to give 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to developing countries to finance adaptation to climate change. Today, we see that the account is not there and that promises to reduce inequalities in the world are not being fulfilled”blow lecologist Lauranne Gateau.

Thus, these scientists hope to encourage the population to put pressure on their governments so that they keep their promise, including to the most vulnerable, at home, as on the other side of the world. “For a long time, the mission of scientists was to inform decision-makers. Today, the latter have the information and do nothing with it”, continues the researcher. “We continue to highlight only the growth, while the population wants above all a roof, to be able to feed themselves, heat themselves and raise their children in a livable world”she adds.

The media coverage offered by COP27 and the energy crisis affecting the European continent, as well as the still fresh memory of an extraordinary summer, offer an ideal opportunity to convey this message of convergence between the environment and social issues. Even if it means disconcerting public opinion by this mode of action, civil disobedience, which contrasts with the reserve traditionally observed by scientists. “All forms of action are important, says Milan Bouchet-Valat. Legal actions, research activities that allow us to advance knowledge (…) We are firing on all cylinders.”