New analysis commissioned by Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe reveals a sharp rise in private jet flights to European holiday hotspots last year, with a significant increase during peak vacation periods compared to off-season travel.
At European holiday destinations, private jet arrivals surged by 250% in July compared to January, indicating that most of these flights were for leisure purposes. Over 117,000 flights to 45 luxury destinations were recorded throughout 2023, resulting in more than 520,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Notably, Nice, Geneva and Palma de Mallorca emerged as the top three destinations for private jet traffic.
Clara Thompson, transport campaigner for Greenpeace Germany said: “While ordinary people face the devastating impacts of the climate crisis – extreme floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires – the ultra-wealthy continue to hop aboard their private jets under the guise of business travel, but often for leisure trips to Europe’s most luxurious holiday spots. These private flights account for a disproportionate share of aviation emissions, accelerating the climate emergency. This extravagant luxury not only worsens environmental harm but also deepens inequality, leaving the majority to suffer the consequences of climate disasters and daily hardships.”
The research, conducted by the T3 Transportation Think Tank, focuses on destinations heavily promoted by luxury tour operators and private jet companies. The majority of private jet flights occurred in the Mediterranean during summer and shifted to the Alpine region in the colder months. The data reveals a significant seasonal spike, highlighting increased use for leisure and holiday purposes.
Furthermore, 93.2% of these flights were within Europe, with 11.9% covering short distances of up to 250 km – journeys that could have easily been made using more sustainable options like trains or ferries. A single private jet flight to these destinations emits almost as much carbon as the average European citizen’s annual energy-related emissions (4.46 vs. 5.37 tonnes of CO2), underscoring how the ultra-wealthy disproportionately contribute to the climate crisis.
Greenpeace is calling for an immediate ban on private jets, and for governments to consider a wealth tax for billionaires in Europe to fund public goods such as affordable housing and public transport.
More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.
Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found.
More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies.
In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.
“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release.
But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.
Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known.
These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.
Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment.
The Coors Family At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
In 1972, Joseph Coors, grandson of Coors Brewing Company founder Adolph Coors, kick-started the Heritage Foundation with an initial gift of $250,000. For years, he supported the conservative think tank’s growth, ultimately funneling his funds through the Adolph Coors Foundation, the nonprofit he started with his brother Bill in 1976.
“There wouldn’t be a Heritage Foundation without Joe Coors,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote in a 2003 tribute.
Joseph Coors meets with Ronald Reagan in 1981. Credit: Wikipedia
The tradition continues today, with billionaire Peter H. Coors — retired beer magnate and Adolph’s great-grandson — at the helm. The Adolph Coors Foundation funded 22 Project 2025 advisory groups between 2020 and 2023, including $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation. Vance has been connected to Heritage since at least 2017, when he wrote the forward to that organization’s “Index of Culture and Opportunity” and gave a keynote address at a Heritage event promoting the report.
Of the Project 2025 groups, Coors funded Hillsdale College, which The New Yorker called “the Christian liberal-arts college at the heart of the culture wars,” most heavily, with nearly $900,000 in donations since 2020. Former Heritage staffer James Braid, today Vance’s deputy chief of staff and legislative director, spent 10 months as a James Madison fellow at Hillsdale College in 2021. Braid appeared on camera in a Project 2025 training video recently obtained by ProPublica and Documented. Braid was also an advisor at American Moment, another Project 2025 group.
The Coors Foundation gave an additional $5.9 million to DonorsTrust, a not-for-profit that describes itself as a philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors — and that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes annually, including to numerous Project 2025 advisors, as well as other organizations that downplay or deny the science and urgency of climate change.
Charles G. Koch At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
In terms of raw numbers, Charles Koch — the CEO and chairman of Koch Industries, a sprawling conglomerate with an oil refinery focus — isn’t the biggest donor to Project 2025 groups in the past few years. But his support for the vast fundraising apparatus that powers conservative charities, including dozens of the initiative’s coalition partners, goes back decades, and his influence can’t be underestimated. A review of public financial disclosures by Greenpeace found that the network of charitable foundations linked to Koch and his late brother, David Koch, donated more than $165 million to climate-change-denying groups between 1986 and 2018. That includes more than $23 million to 16 nonprofits that Project 2025 lists among its advisors.
Throughout the 1990s, Koch Industries was also a “vital supporter” of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Project 2025 advisor. A membership group that connects more than 2,000 state legislators to over 300 corporations and private foundations, ALEC calls itself “a forum for stakeholders to exchange ideas”; New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer, in her book Dark Money, describes it as an enormously successful effort “aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.” Foundations linked to Charles G. Koch donated more than $1.2 million to ALEC since 2020, Desmog’s review found, mostly through his Stand Together Trust.
Koch’s largest donations to Project 2025 groups since 2020 included $3.8 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a climate-change-denying nonprofit with close links to both the Heritage Foundation and the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump tapped Brooke Rollins, TPPF’s CEO since 2003, for a post at the Office of American Innovation; in 2020, he named her to lead his administration’s domestic policy strategy. By 2019, there were so many connection points between TPPF and the Trump administration that Politico’s E & E News wrote a story about it.
Rollins was succeeded at TPPF by Kevin Roberts, who had been promoted to CEO by 2021, when he left to become president of The Heritage Foundation. Koch-linked nonprofits also donated $845,000 to Heritage since 2020.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. They donate heavily to conservative causes through the Ed Uihlein Foundation, named after Richard’s father, a packaging company entrepreneur whose grandfather was an original founder of the Schlitz beer company.
Among its donations to 13 different Project 2025 groups since 2020, Uihlein’s largest grants went to the Foundation for Government Accountability ($6.6 million), a limited-government think tank that has railed against “the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda,” and the American Cornerstone Institute ($2.5 million), founded by neurosurgeon and former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has called climate change “irrelevant” as recently as 2015.
Outside the nonprofit sphere, the Uihleins are major donors to the Trump campaign. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that the couple donated $10 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, in May 2024.
The Scaife Family At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. A billionaire heir to the vast Mellon fortune, which was created thanks to his progenitors’ exploits in oil and aluminum production, banking, and other industries, Scaife provided years of critical financial support to the Heritage Foundation, starting in 1973. A 1999 article in the Washington Post called him the “funding father of the Right.”
Today, two foundations Scaife once controlled — the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation — continue to give heavily to conservative causes, including to numerous organizations involved in climate change denial. DeSmog’s review found that Scaife family foundations gave $4.1 million to the Heritage Foundation since 2022, while also contributing to 22 other Project 2025 advisory groups.
Scaife foundations also donated an additional $1.2 million to the State Policy Network, an ALEC-linked group that supports conservative nonprofits that oppose government regulation, including 25 members of Project 2025’s coalition.
Barre Seid At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors. He is reportedly a major benefactor supporting the Heartland Institute, a Project 2025 advisor organization that The Economist called “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change” — a description Heartland approvingly quotes on its website.
In late 2020, Barre donated 100 percent of Tripp Lite’s shares to Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard A. Leo. In early 2021, Leo sold the shares, netting $1.65 billion. The amount is said to be “among the largest — if not the largest — single contributions ever made to a politically focused nonprofit,” according to The New York Times.
Since May 2020, Marble Freedom Trust has donated $100 million to Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, a Leo-linked nonprofit. In that time, Concord has donated $22.4 million to eight Project 2025 groups, giving most heavily ($11.9 million) to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Seid also gave $2 million to Independent Women’s Voice, the sister organization of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 advisor. During her time as director for the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Energy and Conservation, Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency official, authored Project 2025’s chapter on restructuring the EPA — with recommendations that include “cutting its size and scope” dramatically.
The Bradley Family At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015.
But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally.
The Bradley Foundation and a second philanthropic vehicle it supports, the Bradley Impact Fund, donated over $50 million to 29 different Project 2025 advisors since 2020. That’s not including an additional $56 million to DonorsTrust, which a 2013 Mother Jones investigation dubbed, along with its affiliate group Donors Capital Fund, the “dark money ATM” of the U.S. conservative movement. The Bradley Foundation’s Project 2025-linked donations include more than $7.7 million to Turning Point USA, a “powerful ally” of the Trump presidential campaign, which promotes conservative causes on university campuses and is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry. Its single largest donation was $27.1 million in 2022 to Project 2025 advisor Turning Point Legal, founded by former Trump advisor, and past president of a coal lobby group, Stephen Miller.
It is understood that Starmer has sought advice from the registrar of MPs’ interests and that the donations will be recategorised as donations in kind of clothing. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty Images
Keir Starmer was given a further £16,000 worth of clothes by the Labour peer Waheed Alli, which was declared as money for his private office, the Guardian can reveal.
The donations, comprising £10,000 in October 2023 and £6,000 in February 2024, bring the total amount in gifted clothes to £32,000.
These latest gifts were not previously known about as they were described as being “for the private office of the leader of the opposition”.
The revelation is likely to reignite a row over the extent of donations that Starmer and some of his frontbench team acccepted while in opposition, much of it from Alli.
…
He has also been criticised for accepting tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of football and concert ticket freebies while leader of the opposition. His wife, Victoria, also received clothes as donations, as did Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister.
Wildfires are seen in San Marcos Sierra, Cordoba province, Argentina, on September 23, 2024. (Photo: Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
“The real question isn’t whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.”
Research published Tuesday estimates that rich countries could mobilize over $5 trillion a year for climate action worldwide by cutting off subsidies to the oil and gas industry, imposing a levy on big polluters, and cracking down on tax evasion by large corporations and the rich.
The new report from Oil Change International (OCI) was released as world leaders gathered in New York City for high-level United Nations General Assembly talks, a meeting that comes less than two months before the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.
OCI’s research, which includes a fact sheet outlining various proposals to raise funds for climate action, stresses that “there is no shortage of public money available for rich countries to pay their fair share on fair terms for climate action at home and abroad.”
“The urgency and extent of growing economic inequality, unfair sovereign debt crises, climate disasters, and fossil fuel profits have created significant momentum towards many of these measures in international and domestic policy spheres,” OCI’s research brief notes. “Finance has been in the spotlight in most major international political fora in the past few years in recognition that our current financial architecture is a major driver of these overlapping crises.”
Among the proposals laid out in OCI’s brief are an equitable end to “public finance, direct subsidies, and state-owned company investments in fossil fuels,” which could raise $846 billion a year globally; a “climate damages tax” on fossil fuel extraction, which could raise $618 billion a year; a 25% minimum corporate tax rate, which could raise $479 billion annually; and a wealth tax on billionaires, which could raise roughly $2.60 trillion a year in the Global North and over $5.6 trillion worldwide.
Laurie van der Burg, OCI’s public finance lead, said that the rich nations most responsible for the climate emergency “owe this money to Global South countries that have not caused this crisis and need fair finance to deliver strong climate plans next year that phase out fossil fuels.”
“This is essential to avoid climate breakdown and save lives,” she added.
The clock is ticking ⏰ Rich nations must deliver a roadmap for at least $1 TRILLION/year by 2025. No more empty promises. It's time to pay up for a just transition! 💚 Read the full report: https://t.co/eKwm0zXitspic.twitter.com/4qjTO5JQ8c
The COP29 climate summit will take place a year after nations agreed at COP28 to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems” in a “just, orderly, and equitable manner.”
The success of that pledge, OCI said, depends on rich nations contributing massively to global climate finance after years of falling short of their pledges and continuing to expand fossil fuel extraction and handouts. Worldwide, environmentally harmful subsidies—including fossil fuel subsidies—have surged to $2.6 trillion a year, according to a report released last week.
“Global North countries have a responsibility to redirect their share of these subsidies in support of climate action,” OCI said Tuesday.
The new report comes on the heels of a record-hot summer and amid devastating extreme weather, from massive flooding across Europe and Africa to wildfires in South America.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said Tuesday that “the real question isn’t whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.”
“It is a bitter irony that rich nations hide behind claims of fiscal restraint, yet trillions are still spent on fossil fuel subsidies and militarization,” said Sieber. “The truth is simple: the money exists, but the political will does not. By treating climate finance as a zero-sum game, wealthy countries not only deepen global inequality but also undermine their own futures.”
“The energy transition isn’t charity—it’s an investment in global stability and security,” Sieber added. “Ignoring the need for support only worsens the climate crisis, which knows no borders.”
A private jet operated by Aeropartner, comes in to land at Stansted Airport in Essex
FAIR taxes on private jets and superyachts could have raked in £2 billion last year to help communities devastated by climate change, an Oxfam report revealed today.
Britain has the second-highest number of private jet flights in Europe, trailing only behind France.
Oxfam found that there were 192,052 private jet flights to and from Britain last year, not including those for medical, government, or military purposes.
According to climate charity Possible, flying by private jet can be up to 30 times more polluting than standard flights.
Oxfam also found that Britain is also home to 450 fuel-guzzling superyachts.
Indiana University academics found that a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits an estimated 7,020 (US) tonnes of CO2 a year. In comparison, petrol cars produce about 1,749kg a year.
Oxfam is calling on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to increase taxes on the super-rich using these modes of transport, and redirect the funds to help tackle the climate emergency, while preventing lower-income families from shouldering the burden.
