Two trips to Mexico looked very different for a Redditor and one of the world's wealthiest people.
In a series of photos, which they captioned "Dennis Washington's fleet of super yachts in Puerto Vallarta," the poster shared snaps of several of the businessman's luxury yachts.
"I visit Puerto Vallarta every year and he always seems to have one positioned here," they wrote. "Each has their own helicopter."
Washington's net worth is over $7 billion, per Forbes, and each of his yachts is worth millions of dollars.
Fellow Redditors were astonished by the extravagance. "I always keep a heli on deck too," one person joked. "You never know when you'll get sick of fixing the boat and need something else to work on. (Sarcasm)."
"I'm so confused, why would anyone need 5 super yachts, with 5 helicopters?" another chimed in. "Even more baffling is why are all of them essentially parked in the same vicinity? Us poor folk just don't understand the logic I guess."
Fellow wealthy celebrities and business owners have been criticized for their own excessive material purchases and lifestyles. For example, Atlanta Falcons chairman Arthur Blank was called out for traveling on a private jet so frequently that he produced the equivalent of 450 cars' worth of planet-heating pollution; Australian billionaire Nick Molnar evicted dozens of families and residents from several apartment complexes in order to expand his own megamansion complex.
Aside from the flagrant wealth disparity, many people take issue with the seemingly careless approach to consuming natural resources.
According to nonprofit research group Transport & Environment, just 1% of people cause 50% of all global aviation pollution via private flights. Similarly, the most wealthy 1% cause double the pollution as the poorest 50% of the world's population, per Greenly.
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And because many middle-income people are making concerted efforts to lower their own pollution footprints, such as buying fewer mass-produced items or opting for electric vehicles, the blatant disregard for environmental impact on the part of many of the uber-wealthy has caused outrage.
In some places, such as Canada, governments are levying increased taxes on these modes of transit to try to offset their disproportionate impact. And as more celebrities learn about the impact of their lifestyles, some of them are even encouraging their peers to scale back to model kindness toward the planet.
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