Many of you will have seen that on Monday, popstar Katy Perry was part of an all-female crew who flew to the edge of space on a Blue Origin rocket.
The firework singer was one of six women who went on the roughly 11-minute long flight on board one of Jeff Bezos’ rockets. The others on the mission were Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, civil activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Amanda Nguyễn, legendary TV presenter Gayle King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
The mission launched into space from the West Texas launch site at 08:30 local time (14:30 BST) and landed safely around 11 minutes later.
But many have been critical of the flight, seeing it as a performative spectacle that was anything but the women-empowering gesture that the organisers clearly had in mind.
There is also a deep and depressing environmental hypocrisy at the heart of it as well. Before the mission, Perry had told Variety in an interview that the flight will not be about her, but instead will be about “this beautiful Earth.”
“I think from up there, we will think ‘Oh my God, we have to protect our mother,” she said.
Except here’s the thing: the individual carbon footprint for each of the passengers on the mission was larger than that of the one billion poorest people on Earth.
Allow us to explain. NBC reports that each passenger on a typical space tourism flight of 11 minutes emits at least 75 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere once indirect emissions are taken into account as well.
Meanwhile, the poorest one billion people on Earth have a carbon footprint of less than one tonne of CO2 per capita per annum.
Blue Origin claims the only byproduct of the engine combustion on its New Shepard rocket is “water vapor with no carbon emissions.”
But scientists have pointed out that water vapour is also a greenhouse gas and is not meant to be emitted into the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Eloise Marais, a professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Air Quality at University College London told the BBC: “It alters the chemistry of the stratosphere, depleting the ozone layer, and also forms clouds that affect climate.”
So Katy Perry may have had an environmental awakening on her trip to the edge of space, but there can be little doubt that she and the rest of those onboard New Shepard have produced more carbon emissions through their 11-minute journey than many of us will in our lifetimes.
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