It’s highly problematic when Democratic politicians who claim to want to fight the scourge of climate change rely so heavily on private jets for their travel needs. Thankfully, they’ve got outlets like the AP to help mitigate the badness of the optics:

Those poor progressive millionaire candidates. They just have to fly private jets but they don’t really want to! Really that’s the super duper truth of it! Swear to Karl Marx! pic.twitter.com/Y6dk3vJtBx

Oh, it’s still happening. It’s just OK when progressives contribute to it because at least they care about the environment:

[Bernie Sanders’] campaign is making payments to NativeEnergy, based in Burlington, Vermont, which is the same company that Clinton used for them during her presidential bid in 2016. That’s also the same firm Warren uses, with her campaign paying a little more than $10,000 to it in September.

Some climate advocates said they weren’t bothered by the private travel, especially because they view a more carbon-conscious administration as a far better result for the climate than four more years of Trump in the White House.

“If you’re a presidential candidate running to try to beat Donald Trump, who is a climate denier to his bones, and that requires you to move around the country … you should do that,” said Leah Stokes, a professor and researcher into climate and energy politics at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

“World leaders fly around in airplanes — this is the modern era,” Stokes said. They can’t just hop a speedy train to Iowa, she said.