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Obama’s Carbon Admission: ‘I Have the World’s Largest Carbon Footprint’

President Obama once “ruefully” admitted to staff that he personally is the planet’s largest source of carbon emissions, according to an anecdote published in The Atlantic.

The brief aside was mentioned by author Jeffrey Goldberg in a passage about the burden of Obama’s worldwide travel arrangements.

With that, Obama stood up and said, “Okay, gotta go.” He headed out of his office and down the stairs, to the red carpet and the honor guard and the cluster of Malaysian officials waiting to greet him, and then to his armored limousine, flown to Kuala Lumpur ahead of him. (Early in his first term, still unaccustomed to the massive military operation it takes to move a president from one place to another, he noted ruefully to aides, “I have the world’s largest carbon footprint.”)

As of January last year, the president was approaching 450,000 miles of international travel during his administration, according to numbers compiled by TIME. This being his last year in office, he has a full travel schedule in 2016, including a short jaunt to Cuba this month.

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