You cannot preach about going green from the luxury of your private jet

In last week's episode of popular TV drama Succession, the ultra-rich Roy family were faced with an ultimatum during tense negotiations with shareholders. Get rid of the private jets ("elitist and out of touch") or it's a no deal for their media conglomerate.

The family baulked. "First they came for the PJs and I said nothing," protested Roman Roy, the clan's amoral comedian. "Then they came for the outsized compensation payments."

But powerful people refusing to let go of their private jets is not a theme that is isolated to the screen. The corporate elite's green preaching is currently being drowned out by the roar of their private jets. Just like the fictional Roy family, billionaire bosses around the world do not appear willing to let this luxury status symbol go.

That makes a lot of the recent rhetoric feel like hot air. Failing to practice what they preach on global warming, hundreds of wealthy leaders recently flew into Glasgow for the Cop26 climate change conference in private jets and have continued to fly privately since.

Last week, days after environmental campaigners staged a "die in" outside JP Morgan's Glasgow office and fresh from the climate summit ending, JP Morgan's influential boss Jamie Dimon used the Wall Street bank's private plane to visit employees in Hong Kong, London and Frankfurt.

Insiders justified the choice of travel by saying the planes are used as "efficiently as possible", with several executives on board rather than just one.

Such convenience comes at a damaging cost to the environment. Small jets emit 10 times more greenhouse gases per passenger than scheduled flights and are 50 times more polluting than trains, according to campaign group Transport & Environment.

A four-hour private flight emits as much as the average person does in a year. Andrew Murphy, aviation director for the group, said travelling this way is "probably the worst thing you can do for the environment. And yet, super-rich super polluters are flying around like there’s no climate crisis".

Despite the obvious hypocrisy, this is a comfort that just seems too good to give up for large companies that are brandishing their green credentials. Goldman Sachs, whose boss David Solomon was arguing how important a transition to a green economy was last week, bought two new corporate jets last year and is not expected to get rid of them anytime soon.

It is not just businesses failing to lead by example. Boris Johnson, who told world leaders at Cop26 to stop “quilting the earth in a suffocating blanket of Co2” and to “get real” about their responsibilities to the planet, flew back to London by private jet instead of taking the four-and-a-half hour train.

Downing Street defended the decision by saying he had “significant time constraints” which meant the train was not an option.

He was not alone. The conference is thought to have generated as much carbon dioxide as 4,200 Britons emit in a year, mainly due to the amount of private jets flying in. Lavish limousines were also spotted dropping wealthy delegates off at the conference before parking with their engines running.

Instead of turning their backs on elite travel as the earth warms, even more people have hopped aboard in recent years. CO2 emissions from private jets in Europe rose by nearly a third between 2005 and 2019, according to campaign group Transport & Environment, while data provider WingX said there has been a record number of private flights every month for the last six months.

Private jet use shot up 54pc in the first week of November compared to a year ago, showing that appetite for on-demand travel remains strong despite restrictions lifting.

The pandemic has encouraged more people to fly private. Forbes' latest annual world billionaires list shows that the rich have only got richer, with almost 90pc of the world's billionaires wealthier than they were a year ago.

There are a total of 2,755 billionaires in the world whose fortunes add up to $13.4 trillion, a significant jump on the year before when there were 660 billionaires worth a combined $8 trillion.

Some companies which have their own corporate jets, such as the world's largest banks, have also made significantly more money during this crisis. The private jet sector has been boosted by a combination of wealthier clients, a sudden lack of commercial options due to restrictions and a fear of coronavirus transmission on busy flights.

AirX, one of Europe's largest private jet operators, which charges around £30,000 for a plane seating eight people to fly to Malaga, said last year that it was spending an extra £50,000 a month cleaning its fleet. Some of the uber-rich who previously snubbed the idea of flying private for fear of showing off or damaging the environment have joined the club to avoid the extra baggage of getting sick.

With cases still raging, it will be hard to change their minds.

But high-profile business executives who have become newly hooked on flying this way, or are used to it having done so all their careers, must wean themselves off. Boasting about going green while jetting around in a private plane is not a good look as the planet burns.

In Succession, when Roman Roy was told that the jets his family's company uses are "elitist and out of touch," he responded by simply saying "duh". Leaders who still refuse to change their direction of travel amid a major climate crisis may as well be using the same argument.