While the 27th climate conference (COP 27) opened on Sunday, November 6 in Egypt, the travels of leaders are at the heart of comments on social networks. Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting in Sharm el-Sheihh until November 18 to try to breathe new life into the fight against global warming. But some claims circulating on Twitter are incorrect. We take stock.
400 private jets to transport the leaders?
“No less than 400 private jets of world leaders will go to the COP27 climate summit”, indignant Internet users on Twitter. But this figure is the one revealed by the Daily Record during COP 26, in November 2021, which took place in Glasgow, United Kingdom. According to aviation sources, these 400 jets carried 1,000 people including country leaders, business leaders and their staff.
The figure was debated: the BBC reported 182 non-commercial flights, between Glasgow, Prestwick and Edinburgh, referring to the FlyRadar24 site. This figure, however, excluded charter flights, such as Air Force One, the plane of the President of the United States. Before the start of the conference, 76 flights had been recorded by Circum, an aviation analysis company.
According to washington postwhich had compared the greenhouse gas emissions estimated for the COPs since 2009, COP 26 was the most polluting, with 102,500 tonnes of CO2 emitted, twice as much as the Madrid conference in 2019 (51,100 tonnes of CO2 ) or that of Paris in 2015 (43,000 tonnes of CO2).
Do the negotiators ride in imposing vehicles?
Large limousines come out of a cargo plane. The photo circulated a lot on French and English networks. “They arrive at COP27 to talk about “climate””, denounces a tweet shared more than 1,100 times. But not all managers or business leaders travel with such a fleet.
By doing a reverse image search, we see that this photo illustrates a video published on March 23, 2022 on the Fluctus YouTube channel, which mainly posts videos recounting the performance of war machines, particularly at sea. Here, the video describes the organization of the trips of American presidents, such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The photo shows a C17 Globemaster, a cargo plane that can transport the fleet of vehicles accompanying the exits of the President of the United States. Already a few years ago, photos of the interior of the C-17 showing the limousines of the presidential convoy had been shared by the American secret services, as reported by the DailyMail in 2017.
If it is possible that this plane is part of Joe Biden’s convoy to COP 27, the president will not go there until Friday, after the midterm elections.