Google’s Extravagant Climate Change Camp Mocked as Party for ‘Entitled Fools’
ENVIRONMENT, 12 Aug 2019
Ebony Bowden | Page Six – TRANSCEND Media Service
Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and Harry Styles. Getty Images
1 Aug 2019 – Google’s carbon-spewing climate change conference at an Italian resort has been widely slammed as a tone-deaf party for the elite A-listers who jetted there.
“Is there anything more hypocritical than a bunch of rich people flying their private jets across the world to sit on yachts and discuss the future of our planet?” said Twitter user @asilia1981, reflecting the general reaction online to this week’s Google Camp event in Sicily.
As the party drew to a close on Thursday, newspaper columns and social media were awash with criticism for the three-day, billionaire-packed event — which saw more than 200 of the world’s richest and most famous names take private jets to the Italian island and stay on mega yachts while also talking about stopping climate change.
BBC presenter Andrew Neil repeatedly lampooned the event on Twitter.
“Scores of celebrities and the rich have arrived in Sicily for a Google conference. They came in 114 private jets and a flotilla of super yachts,” Neil wrote to his nearly 1 million Twitter followers. “The conference is on global warming.
“Well, what is conference going to achieve, other than a glamorous [party] for the rich?”
In an opinion piece in The Times, Stuart Heritage sneered: “If the best name that Google could think of to save the world is Harry Styles, we’re all screwed.”
The billionaire creators of Google each year invite a who’s who of A-listers to the event, which is meant to be a conference where influential people discuss how to make the world a better place.
But photos of celebrities tooling around the island on Maseratis and arriving on diesel-spewing mega yachts worth up to $400 million infuriated everyone watching from home.
One guest rolled up in a flashy yellow Maserati. Splash News
Celebrities such as Styles, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom and Diane von Furstenberg were invited to attend this year — while Prince Harry on Monday gave an impassioned barefoot speech about the need to save the planet.
Local Italian media reported celebrities chartered a whopping 114 private jets to the island, spewing hundreds of tonnes of CO2 into the air.
“We’re all lugging around KeepCups and recycling properly while these entitled fools are taking 114 private jets to a CLIMATE CHANGE conference,” Irish journalist Eleanore Hutch fumed.
Former Republican House candidate Elizabeth Heng also lobbed criticism at the secretive event for the world’s elite, saying “How ironic.”
“For all this talk about saving the earth, 114 private jets chartered to attend this conference. Eliminating carbon footprint, eh?” she wrote Thursday.
Celebrities have followed a no social media rule but on Wednesday night were photographed taking their Maseratis to the closing night $100,000 banquet dinner held in the grounds of the 2,500 year old Valley of the Temples.
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