By MICHAEL BASTASCH
The thousands who flocked to Germany for the United Nations climate summit will end up, rather ironically, emitting thousands of tons of the very greenhouse gases attendees want to regulate.
The U.N. admits the “lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions” associated with their latest climate summit, and up to 25,000 people are expected to attend the U.N. summit in Bonn, which kicked off Monday.
Most attendees will get to Bonn by aircraft, the U.N. said. Representatives from governments, environmental groups, businesses and media outlets will flood the U.N.’s World Conference Center to discuss, among other things, the 2015 Paris climate agreement on climate change.
While the U.N. has taken steps to power the conference and associated transportation with “clean” energy, most of the emissions associated with the climate summit will come from air travel.
Pierre-Henri Guignard, the secretary general of the 2015 summit, told The New York Times that year that “85 percent of the carbon footprint of the conference is linked to travel by the delegations.”
