If all goes according to plan, Hollywood icon Leonardo DiCaprio will blast into space aboard the maiden voyage of
Richard Branson's
Virgin Galactic spaceship sometime this year, opening up a new
era of civilian space travel. This development might only be remarkable
as the fulfillment of a dream long predicted by futurists and
technophiles, were it not for the fact that Messrs. Branson and DiCaprio
are prominent environmentalist celebrities who have warned of a coming
ecological catastrophe if we fail to address our carbon problem.
Mr.
Branson's commitment to fighting climate change is praiseworthy: Over
the years, he has consistently advocated for a broad mix of clean energy
sources, including nuclear. He is founder and chief benefactor of the
Carbon War Room, an outfit that has long advocated for carbon pricing
and energy efficiency measures to help alleviate global warming. Mr.
DiCaprio is on the board of trustees of the Natural Resources Defense
Council and has decried overconsumption. "We are the number one leading
consumers, the biggest producers of waste around the world," the actor
said in 2008.
Private space travel
doesn't seem to mesh with living green, and Mr. Branson surely
anticipated that his project would raise environmentalists' eyebrows.
Perhaps that's why he announced this past May: "We have reduced the
[carbon emission] cost of somebody going into space from something like
two weeks of New York's electricity supply to less than the cost of an
economy round-trip from Singapore to London."
That
would be a remarkable achievement in energy efficiency if it were true.
Alas, it is not. According to the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration's environmental assessment of the launch and re-entry of
Virgin Galactic's spacecraft, one launch-land cycle emits about 30 tons
of carbon dioxide, or about five tons per passenger. That is about five
times the carbon footprint of a flight from Singapore to London.
The Virgin Galactic story is familiar: Environmental celebrities and other elites often have a very hard time walking their talk. The bigger story is what Virgin Galactic tells us about the likely trajectory of future energy consumption.
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