The ultrarich may want to reconsider the "if you've got it, flaunt it" ethos in New York City.
Billionaire Lorenzo Fertitta, former CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, drew the ire of the peasants by docking a 285-foot superyacht at Chelsea Piers in October, the New York Post reported. The newspaper noted it was a similar boat to those that had blocked views of the Statue of Liberty years prior.
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The $160 million vessel looks like a floating skyscraper, and it was topped with a tall tower and a handful of radomes or satellite dishes. The top deck housed a helicopter, speedboat, and exercise bike, and the lower decks featured a large pool with cabanas and a sheltered hot tub surrounded by seating.
There's another hot tub on the bow, and the ship carries 12 passengers and 27 crew members. It's constructed of steel and aluminum and relies on the power of a pair of diesel engines that burn 160,000 liters of fuel.
It comes as no surprise that the ostentatious display sparked backlash, as the wealthiest people in the world are destroying the planet while they get richer on the backs of commoners.
Superyachts have proliferated since 2000, with 150 new launches every year, Common Dreams reported, citing research by Oxfam International. Even when they're moored, they emit toxic pollution — 22% of their overall output. Private jets draw a lot of attention around this issue, but these megayachts are three times as polluting.
One craft adds as much carbon pollution to the environment in just 90 minutes as one person does in their lifetime. The effect is that every year, an average superyacht spews gas pollution equivalent to that of the average person over 860 years. It is 5,610 times as much pollution as someone in the poorest 50% of the global population will emit in their lifetime.
Common Dreams noted that these environmental calamities are the least of the problems created by the richest 1%, whose investments make up 43% of worldwide financial assets. The average portfolio of the 50 richest billionaires contributes 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere, which is 340 times greater than the average superyacht and private jet footprint.
If the wealth of the 2,781 richest billionaires — totaling $14.2 trillion — was put toward energy efficiency and renewable energy development, it could pay for what is needed to keep the global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
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"Oxfam's research makes it painfully clear: The extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger, and — make no mistake — threatening lives," Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar stated, per Common Dreams. "It's not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future — it's lethal."
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