After owning up to three private jets, he explains that he realized the “incredibly selfish” side of continuing to use this mode of travel while knowing its environmental cost.
Stephen Prince is a “repentant”. This is the qualifier that comes to mind when you listen to him justify his decision. This 60-year-old American boss has announced that he is no longer using a private jet. He sells his Cessna 650, 830 km / h at cruising speed, an aircraft designed to carry up to seven passengers but that the businessman, apart from four to five times a year to transport his friends to his villa in the Bahamas or his game reserve in Nebraska, often used only for himself.
He explains to the economic information site Business Insider and to the New York Times that in 2023, with all that we know about the environmental impact of private jets, about what it costs the planet, we can no longer continue on this path. In any case, he can no longer:I realized that every time I got on my plane, I was putting ten times more carbon into the atmosphere than if I had taken a first class commercial flight, and in fact, that’s just simply unconscionable. , it’s incredibly selfish.“
Supervise and tax private aviation
We could say that it is a bit candid, but what other billionaire has dared to take this step? Who among the richest 1% on the planet gives up traveling by private jet? So far no one. When put to the question, Bill Gates for example replied that it didn’t matter because he was buying carbon offset points. Others, like stars Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner, don’t even respond, not to mention Elon Musk whose private jet circled the earth more than 12 times last year.
Hence the interest of Stephen Prince’s speech, who speaks of a “private jet addiction“, of a “fantastic tool that takes you where you want, when you want“, without a security gate or a queue, and which we end up taking almost every day simply because we can. But do we have to do it because we can do something? This is the question he puts on the table.
Stephen Prince made his fortune when he started the gift card business in the United States in 1993. A pioneer in the field, this fashion has brought him millions and millions of dollars. In 2016, he co-founded the association of Patriotic Millionaires, a club of entrepreneurs and heirs, all multi-millionaires who plead for a massive increase in taxes on the richest. Including private aviation. And that’s what caused him to give up his jet. For consistency, and above all to show that one is not obliged to wait to be constrained by law to act.