Mike Cannon-Brookes, billionaire tech founder and climate advocate, now owns a private jet. He says it’s necessary for security and balancing a global business with fatherhood. But for someone leading the charge on cutting emissions, is this justifiable?
When I learned about the Atlassian co founder’s jet purchase, the first thing that came to mind was the passionate climate activist I met at Climate Action Week Sydney last week. She had told me about her shock at learning about the carbon footprint of the thousands of unread emails in her inbox.
All those emails are taking up server space, requiring energy for storage, and contributing to data centre energy consumption, she said.
We were discussing email emissions. What do private jet owners discuss?
Email emissions, like those of the average Australian family’s household, are minimal compared to private jet travel. As empowering as it can be to reduce household emissions actively, this work won’t mean much for slowing climate change without strong international commitments to end fossil fuel emissions.
Yet concerns about personal and household emissions are all part of the “climate load” many of us constantly consider in terms of our consumption, especially those concerned about climate change.
It’s a load that typically falls on women. Our 2023 poll of women found that 23 per cent of women reported being solely responsible for the added load of reducing emissions at home, and another 38 per cent reported that they take the lead on it.
Globally, around 256,000 people own private jets, which account for 1.8 percent of total aviation emissions. Around three-quarters of private jet passengers are male, and the vast majority of owners are men.
Mike Cannon-Brookes is not the only Australian billionaire with a private jet. Gina Rinehart also has one, having used it to fly Opposition leader Peter Dutton to the Pilbara to take a look at the operations of Hancock Prospecting’s Roy Hill iron ore mine.
Unlike Gina Rinehart—who embraces fossil fuels and cheers on “Drill, baby, drill” policies—Cannon-Brookes actively campaigns for climate action. He’s pushed AGL Energy to shut down coal plants and invested in massive solar projects like Sun Cable. But can his personal decisions align with his public advocacy?
Cannon-Brookes says he had a “deep internal conflict” about purchasing the private jet, writing on LinkedIn that it doesn’t mean he’s waivered his commitment to combating climate change. He gave several reasons for purchasing the plane, including personal security and “also so I can run a global business from Australia, and still be a constantly present dad.” He said on LinkedIn that his flights “actually have a net negative carbon footprint” through a “rigorous carbon regime” he has deployed, which includes using sustainable fuels and a tech enabling carbon dioxide to be removed from the atmosphere.
Cannon-Brookes can afford a private jet, and he wanted a private jet. He might even argue that private flight efficiencies enable him to do more for the climate action work, so why shouldn’t he have one.
But to claim security and fatherhood as justifications? That’s harder to accept.
Is the security good enough for the 300 or so souls who board a regular flight from Sydney to San Franciso? And many of us would prefer to be, and often have no choice to be, more “present” with kids and juggle these decisions daily around how much work we can and can’t take on, often to the detriment of our earnings and businesses. Just how much more present can you be with the hours saved from flying private, instead of First Class in one of the numerous flights on offer from Australia to the United States every week?
I’m not prepared to dismiss Cannon-Brookes’ role in the climate movement. We don’t have enough such individuals engaged in the fight and can’t risk “cancelling” one. The current US President isn’t even pretending to be engaged at all, pulling the US out of the Paris agreement for a second time and purging websites and support for research mentioning the word “climate”.
But it’s a shame that Cannon-Brookes will lose credibility among colleagues in the climate space, and has become easy fodder for some media outlets to dismiss his work and label him a hypocrite.
For those of us feeling the pain of our “hard, continual trade-offs” on energy emissions, I suggest we go a little easier on ourselves and consider the bigger picture and the power we have to make a more significant impact elsewhere, including how we vote, what and who we support and what we can engage in. There’s never been a better time to get engaged in ways that go beyond creating stress and domestic loads at home.