Dominic Lawson: Planes, Hypocrites and Automobiles

It must be wonderful to call on us all to consume less petrol in order to ‘save the planet’, but get free rides in what the Guardian/Observer salutes as ‘one of the most successful luxury performance cars of all time’.

Poor Dame Emma Thompson: photographed in seat 2F of the first-class cabin of a British Airways flight from London to New York, while tucking in to her complimentary beef carpaccio canapes — only a fortnight after flying to the UK from Los Angeles to play her revolutionary part in the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations against climate change.

High-flying hypocrite: Dame Thompson is spotted on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to JFK on Friday morning, despite earlier demanding: ‘We should all fly less’

Thompson is charged with extreme hypocrisy, as Extinction Rebellion insists that flights (even economy ones) should only be taken in ‘an emergency’.

But I think we should give the Corbyn-supporting actress a bit of credit. She could, as she has in the past, have taken a private jet — which is even more CO2-generative per traveller.

Instead, she decided to slum it in the first-class cabin of a commercial airliner. That’s a true sacrifice.

A fortnight ago, Thompson flew to the UK from Los Angeles to play her revolutionary part in the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations against climate change

And it’s hard to be a passionate advocate of carbon emission reduction without wanting a little bit of the high life, too.

For example, the leading article of the left-of-centre Observer newspaper yesterday called on the world to do more to prevent ‘the life-threatening dangers of global warming in the Arctic’. It added: ‘As the world’s leaders turn their backs on the environment, we are at a crisis point. Individual consumer choices are important.’

Presumably, choices such as buying cars with much smaller engines, and certainly not monstrous gas-guzzlers of the sort which only those with no care for the planet’s future would zoom around in.

But what’s this, popping up on the Guardian/Observer website at exactly the same time as that stern lecture? A gushing review of the new £159,000 Bentley Continental GT, capable of reaching 207mph (almost three times the motorway speed limit).

The reviewer exults about his driving experience in this beast: ‘Its vast engine is chortling happily. It weighs more than 2 tonnes, yet it can surge from 0-62mph in under 4 seconds. Sitting up front, the limitless potential of the W12 engine hovering beneath your toe, is a truly wonderful place to be.’