Pelosi Spent $500k on Private Jets in One Year: ‘For Me, It’s a Religious Thing'
Huge travel spend emerges as she warns of 'moral obligation' to fight 'climate crisis'
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Nancy Pelosi spent more than half a million dollars on private jets in a little over a year, despite the Democrat House speaker lecturing the American people about their "moral obligation" to reduce emissions.
Throughout 2021, Pelosi spent over $500k on private jets while repeatedly describing the "climate crisis" as an "existential" threat that U.S. taxpayers must address.
Pelosi's extravagant spending was revealed in campaign filings with the Federal Election Commission.
According to the filings, Pelosi’s campaign paid a Virginia-based private aviation provider, Advanced Aviation Team, over $437,000 between October 2020 and December 2021.
The speaker also spent over $65,000 with Clay Lacy Aviation, a California-based private jet provider.
However, private jets are notoriously bad for the environment, producing significantly more emissions per passenger than commercial flights.
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Pelosi’s campaign spent $67,605 on private air travel just months before she said she viewed tackling the climate crisis as a "religious thing."
"For me, it's a religious thing," she said in November after leading a 21-member congressional delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
"I believe this is God's creation, and we have a moral obligation to be good stewards."
Pelosi came under fire in September after she claimed climate change was even more of a priority to discuss with China than its multitude of human rights abuses.
"Climate is an overriding issue, and China is a leading emitter in the world," she said at the time.
Pelosi is far from the only climate hawk to indulge in private airfare.
The campaign for Joe Biden, who promised to make climate change a key priority of his presidency, spent over $15 million on private air travel over the course of his 2020 run.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also been vocal about climate change and being "committed to curbing the effects of climate change," but they have paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Advanced Aviation Team in recent years.
Biden's "climate czar," John Kerry, took a private jet to Iceland in 2019 to receive the Arctic Circle award for climate leadership.
Kerry's family also owns a fleet of private jets.
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Kerry defended his high-pollution ride at the time, calling it "the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle" in an interview obtained by Fox News.
In August 2021, it was revealed that Kerry's family jet had already emitted approximately 30 times more carbon in 2021 than the average vehicle does in a year.
