NANCY PELOSI’S GIANT

CARBON FOOTPRINT

SPPI COMMENTARY & ESSAY SERIES ♦ May 26, 2011

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NANCY PELOSI’S GIANT CARBON FOOTPRINT

May 26, 2011

A few months ago Judicial Watch, which describes itself as a “a conservative, non-partisaneducational foundation, [which] promotes transparency, accountability and integrity ingovernment, politics and the law” summarized the results of its Freedom of Informationrequest for records concerning Nancy Pelosi’s use of Air Force aircraft for her transportationwhile Speaker of the House.

In addition to reporting that over a two-year period Pelosi’s military travel cost the UnitedStates Air Force $2,100,744.59, Judicial Watch also reported that during the period March 2,2009 through June 7, 2010, “Pelosi used the Air Force aircraft for a total of 85 trips, covering206,264 miles.”

Considering how much of a problem that Rep. Pelosi (D-Calif.) considers carbon dioxideemissions and climate change to be—recall that she led the effort to push the passage of a cap-and-trade bill through the House of Representatives during the summer of 2009—we thought itbe interesting to take a look at what kind of a carbon footprint that sort of travel entailed.

We must step through a little math to arrive at the answer, using the Judicial Watch numbers asa starting point.

Total miles of military aircraft from 03/02/09–06/07/10: 206,264 miles

Fuel use of a military C-37A aircraft: 1.23 miles/gallon

Total consumption of jet fuel for Pelosi’s travel: 167,694 gallons

Carbon dioxide emissions per gallon of jet fuel burned: 21.1 lbs/gallon

Total CO2 emissions of Pelosi’s travel: 3,538,343 lbs CO2

Average Annual Per Capita CO2 Emissions in U.S.: 43,560 lbs CO2

BOTTOM LINE

From March 2, 2009 through June 7, 2010, Nancy Pelosi’s travel on military aircraft produced acarbon dioxide footprint that was 81 times that which the average American produces in asingle year.

Apparently, it takes a big carbon footprint to care as much about the environment as NancyPelosi does. Just ask Al Gore, President Obama, and the U.N. Climate Change Conferenceorganizers (http://sppiblog.org/news/who-really-worries-about-carbon-emissions#more-3414).

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NOTES

The documents from Judicial Watch concerning Pelosi’s use of military aircraft fortransportation are available at: http://www.judicialwatch.org/nancy-pelosi#airpelosi.

We assumed, as an average, that Pelosi’s travel was done on a military C-37A aircraft. Inreality, the aircraft she used changed depending on the size of her entourage and the weatherconditions (http://www.snopes.com/politics/pelosi/jet.asp).

We calculated the fuel use of a C-37A aircraft using the specifications available athttp://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/uswpns/air/sam/c37a.html by dividing the maximumrange by the maximum fuel weight. The resulting number is probably an overestimate of thetypical fuel efficiency.

The number we used for the carbon dioxide emitted per gallon of jet fuel burned came fromthe Energy Information Administration (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html)as did our number for America’s per capita CO2 emissions (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/carbondioxide.html).

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Cover photo of military aircraft contrails from aviationexplorer.comand photo of Nancy Pelosi from enterstageright.com.