Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and parent company Meta, has found himself at the center of criticism once again over his use of a megayacht.
According to Greek Reporter, Zuckerberg’s massive yacht, Launchpad, burned more than 500,000 gallons of diesel fuel in the last nine months before docking in France for maintenance.
How did the tech billionaire burn so much fuel in such a short amount of time? Simple. Over the last nine months, Zuckerberg took the 387-foot Launchpad on what was essentially a world tour, from South Asia to Europe.
On top of that, Launchpad spent a fair amount of time waiting on Zuckerberg in South Asia before traveling across the Pacific to meet him in San Francisco, a 9,600-mile round trip that consumed 178,700 gallons of diesel fuel in one fell swoop.
Why is this a problem? Well, put simply, megayachts like Launchpad are some of the biggest polluters on Earth per capita right now. With inefficient engines that pump carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases into the atmosphere, the average megayacht contributes 5,672 metric tons of pollution to the atmosphere each year, an amount that would take the average, non-super-rich person 860 years to produce, according to Oxfam.
If that’s not bad enough, most megayachts have their own, smaller support yachts, which are used to ferry passengers and supplies to and from the ships. These also burn immense amounts of fuel compared to a car, creating a cascade of environmental problems.
One X user called Zuckerberg’s massive ship “a glaring symbol of hypocrisy,” citing the Meta founder’s climate activism as standing in sharp juxtaposition with his continued use of the vessel.
Zuckerberg has pledged to get Meta’s operations and his own personal life to net-zero emissions by 2030, but given the amount of fuel he’s burned with Launchpad, that could prove to be an incredibly tall order.
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