Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez are getting married this week in Venice, Italy. It’s expected to be a huge celebrity event, but now people are talking more about the number of private jets flying in than the wedding itself.
Reports say around 96 private planes are landing in the city over three days. That’s not just expensive, it’s a whole lot of pollution.
A calculation going around shows that just those 96 planes making one trip each will emit about as much carbon dioxide as 27,300 cars would in a single day. That’s based on the average emissions of one flight versus what the EPA says a typical car puts out.
If you break it down, the average car releases 12.6 kilograms of CO2 per day. The planes flying to Bezos’s wedding are estimated to produce about 345,000 kilograms in total.
Do the math and 345,000 divided by 12.6 gets you the 27,300 car figure. That’s just the trip there, not even counting the flights back home.
Bezos and Sanchez got engaged last year, and the wedding is finally happening this week. Big names like Oprah, Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, and Ivanka Trump are expected to be there.
At one point, there were rumors that the couple would spend $600 million on the wedding, but Bezos denied that. New reports now say the budget is somewhere between $15 million and $20 million.
Even that number has people shaking their heads, especially considering the backlash around emissions, the rented-out city space, and the optics of it all. Protesters have already voiced frustration about the whole thing.
A 2024 study on private jets said each flight releases about 3.6 tonnes of CO2. Multiply that by 96 flights and the number is hard to ignore, even if you’re not big on climate talk.
And honestly, most guests could’ve just flown commercial. It’s Venice, not the moon.