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- Akash Shendure, a Seattle teenager, runs Climate Jets. It is a website that tracks the emissions from private jets.
- According to the New York Times, he keeps track of more than 150 wealthy families and individuals.
- Shendure uses Jack Sweeney's data base, which was famously used to track Elon Musk’s plane.
Jack Sweeney, it's time to move on — there's another teenager making waves in tracking carbon emissions of the wealthiest people in the world.
Akash Shendure (17), a Seattle resident, is the brains behind Climate Jets. He wrote on his website that he created the project "to expose the disparity in carbon emissions between the ultra-rich versus average Americans." Sweeney's Ground Control Registration Database, which was created to track Elon Musk’s private plane, is used by Shendure to identify and compile carbon emissions from more than 150 wealthy Americans and families.
The top three highest-emissions families are currently Thomas Siebel, the Murdoch and the DeVos families. Clicking on each link will reveal more information about the number and type of flights, as well as details about jet fuel and carbon dioxide emitted.
According to The New York Times, the teenager said that he wanted to know how much fuel each jet burns so he contacted a data company and explained that he needed it for educational purposes.
He told the Times that he received it from them, and that was very nice. He was not charged by the company.
Shendure is the latest person to keep track of the private jet spending. He follows Sweeney (now 20), who launched his own public-jet tracking system. Sweeney started tracking Musk's private plane in 2020. He created the Twitter account @ElonJet for sharing his findings. He has gained thousands of followers and even job opportunities.
Musk, who had just taken control of Twitter in December 2022, suspended Sweney's account. He threatened to sue the college student. Sweney told Insider's Grace Kay, Sam Tabahriti, that he started following Musk as a fan.
Sweeney stated to Insider that he didn't mean any harm, and that was never the intended purpose for the accounts in December 2022. "I'm just sharing public information. The whole purpose of the account was originally created because I was a fan."
Sweeney is given a special thank you on Shendure’s website. Shendure also thanks "all the contributors at Ground Control Database" for their help in tracking the teen.
Shendure stated to the Times that his goal was to use the website in order to raise awareness. Although the Times notes that his findings are not yet independently confirmed, it is encouraging more people to talk about climate change.
According to the Times, he said that he was impressed by the way his peers talked about small things they could do to help the planet. However, he felt that there wasn't enough attention on the fact that those actions had "such minute impacts relative just to taking a flight with a commercial airline relative a private aircraft."
He told the Times, "It was shocking to me that this wasn’t being discussed more."
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By: insider@insider.com (Bethany Biron)
Title: A 17-year-old Seattle high schooler is tracking more than 150 private jets’ emissions
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/seattle-teenager-tracks-carbon-emissions-private-jets-wealthy-americans-2023-2
Published Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2023 17:23:53 +0000
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