- 84,396
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
None of this is relevant.
Hamilton has cited "avoiding damage to the planet" as a reason for his veganism. Hamilton is one of several individuals involved in Formula One, a sport in which 10 companies have just flown (shoving pollution directly into higher parts of the atmosphere, where they do more damage) thousands of people and thousands of tonnes of cargo over 8,000 miles to burn another 2,000 gallons of fuel. The result of doing so is that Hamilton was the quickest, after three of the people quicker than him the previous day crashed into each other.
He does this 21 times a season. Sometimes it's greater distance (Japan, Australia), sometimes it's less (UK, France, Spain), but on average it's about 3,000 miles from Brackley to a Grand Prix, but with some back-to-back races for the flyaways, the average comes down to about 2,500 - so that's 100,000 miles a season for Mercedes (or 1 million for all ten teams). Series sponsor DHL has a fleet of seven 747s (which emit 3,600g/km CO2, at altitude) that it uses to fly all of the teams' equipment to the distant races - some teams use their own transport and logistics partners - although it employs trucks (at 2,200g/km CO2) for European races. The teams also transport their own personnel and equipment in their own trucks and chartered planes. Hamilton has his own, a Bombardier (which emits 2,500g/km CO2, at altitude), which he will use sometimes instead of his team's flights (and, of course, for personal engagements).
A quick scribbled calculation suggests that his personal CO2 emissions from driving an F1 car sit at 13 tonnes a year, if he doesn't fly his own plane there, rising to 300 tonnes a year if he flies his own plane to every flyaway race. Average it to 155 tonnes if you like. With some assumptions (half flying, half road), the CO2 emissions required to get his car and all the equipment needed to run it to each race are roughly 230 tonnes. That's without the personnel, because I have no way to reasonably estimate that.
So Lewis Hamilton's job produces 385 tonnes of CO2 every year, of which he is responsible for 155 tonnes - if he quit, someone else would do that job and that 230 tonnes would still be produced. That's quite a lot. In fact it's 14 times as much as a normal Brit, and he's doing it half the time (155 tonnes in half a year compared to 11 tonnes a year).
A vegan diet produces 2.9kg of CO2 a day. A meat-rich diet produces 7.2kg of CO2 a day. That's a difference of 4.3kg a day. Over the course of a year, a vegan will produce 1.57 tonnes less CO2 than a meat eater.
Lewis Hamilton, who produces 155 tonnes of CO2 a year for going to places and driving his car once every two weekends, has switched to a vegan diet to save less than one percent* of his personal CO2 emissions from his racing because he wants to "avoid damage to the planet". That's why he's being "singled out" - because he's pontificating about environmental damage, while causing more pollution than 28 people. If he cared that much about avoiding damage to the planet he'd quit F1. Or stop flying his private jet around, or stop driving supercars that car barely reach 10mpg. Vegan or not, he's one of the highest polluters on the planet! That's quite a skewed perspective, and very, very hard to justify on the basis of environmental friendliness.
Now, if anyone on this site supports F1 financially and proselytises about environmental friendliness then, yes, I'd agree that they are being a bit hypocritical. But I don't see any real need to aggressively go after people who are lightly mocking Hamilton's choice and justification for it with "so ure pro pollution i take it? Not fond of breathable air?", when they're not the ones trying to justify shaving one percent off their 2800%-of-normal personal emissions.
*Actually less, as he claims to have been pescatarian for the last two years, which produces about 3.8kg of CO2 a day
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