Billionaire Climate Escapism

A Ranking of Absurdity

By Aaron White, Co-Founder of Climate Karen

Imagine Tanya McQuoid from The White Lotus confronting climate change. She'd likely approach it with the same self-absorbed obliviousness that made us obsessed with her character. "I’m a very needy person and I’m deeply, deeply insecure?" she'd say vacantly, peering through designer sunglasses at rising tides while planning her next exclusive resort escape.

The world's actual billionaires have seemingly taken inspiration from Tanya's playbook. Rather than addressing the climate crisis with practical solutions, they've crafted escape fantasies so grandiose and disconnected they make Tanya's clueless privilege seem almost quaint by comparison. Let's rank these climate exit strategies from breathtakingly absurd to merely wildly impractical.

4. Trump: The Emperor's New Climate Strategy

The most absurd climate escape plan requires no rockets, yachts, or virtual worlds—just an extraordinary capacity for denial. Former President Donald Trump pioneered the "if I can't see it, it doesn't exist" approach to climate science, systematically erasing mentions of climate change from government websites.

This strategy involved removing inconvenient scientific terms from federal documents, dismantling environmental regulations, and promoting fossil fuels with the enthusiasm of Roman Roy discovering cocaine. The fundamental premise: if we simply delete the words "climate change" from our vocabulary, perhaps hurricanes, wildfires, and floods will read the room and politely excuse themselves.

Unfortunately, atmospheric physics doesn't respond to executive orders. Carbon molecules stubbornly continue trapping heat regardless of whether we acknowledge their existence. Hurricanes, demonstrating a shocking disregard for political sensitivities, continue forming over warming oceans.

This is the scientific equivalent of Trump ignoring Eric's phone calls while pretending he doesn't have a least favorite son. The awkward family photos still exist, the appearances on Fox News are still there, and Eric keeps showing up at rallies looking for a pat on the shoulder from his old man but never getting it. Spoiler alert: reality doesn't disappear just because you've decided not to acknowledge it.

3. Zuckerberg: The Metaverse Climate Bunker

Why bother with the messy realities of extreme weather when you can retreat into a perfectly controlled digital simulation? Clearly, putting on sunscreen is a challenge and may only get worse. But in the Zuck Metaverse, no sunscreen is required!

There's something almost poetically dystopian about this approach—as our physical world deteriorates, we'll just plug ourselves into an increasingly elaborate digital fantasy. Mine will be lots watching other people make and eat birria tacos, over and over, because who needs real experiences!

The fatal flaw in this digital escapism? The Metaverse depends entirely on physical infrastructure vulnerable to the very climate disasters it helps us ignore. Those massive data centers require enormous amounts of electricity and cooling—resources increasingly strained by climate extremes. The fiber-optic networks carrying our digital experiences remain stubbornly susceptible to floods, fires, and storms. Even the most exquisitely rendered virtual beach disappears the moment a climate-enhanced hurricane knocks out your power grid.

Reality, it turns out, has an annoying persistence that no amount of digital engineering can overcome. And just like a healthy smathering of zinc oxide to the face, the extreme weather we’re already facing will not disappear.

2. Bezos: The Floating Fortress Strategy

Jeff Bezos, never one for modest aspirations, has opted for a solution as ancient as it is luxurious: when the waters rise, simply float above them. His $400 million superyacht—requiring the dismantling of a historic bridge just to exit the shipyard—represents perhaps the most literal interpretation of "rising above" climate challenges.

This floating citadel, equipped with every imaginable luxury, serves as a personal climate ark for the Amazon founder. As coastal cities struggle with flooding and infrastructure collapse, Bezos can simply sail to calmer waters, perhaps occasionally glancing back at the submerging coastlines with the detached curiosity of a nature documentary narrator.

But here's where scientific reality crashes the yacht party: oceans themselves are becoming increasingly hostile environments thanks to climate change. Rising sea levels are just the beginning. Ocean acidification threatens marine ecosystems. Warming waters fuel more powerful and frequent hurricanes. Even the most advanced stabilization systems and weather radars can't guarantee safety from 50-foot waves or Category 5 storms.

No matter how many billions you spend on your floating fortress, you eventually need to dock somewhere. And when extreme weather events become the norm rather than the exception, no amount of maritime engineering can insulate you from nature's fury. The ocean, indifferent to wealth and status, will treat a billionaire's superyacht with the same physical laws that apply to a fisherman's trawler.

1. Musk: The Martian Exit Strategy

Elon Musk, perpetually thinking bigger than everyone else in the room, has bypassed both denial and Earth-bound solutions entirely. His proposed climate escape route stretches approximately 140 million miles—the average distance to Mars. Through SpaceX, Musk envisions a Martian colony serving as humanity's backup drive, a place where we can restart civilization should Earth become uninhabitable.

The plan involves fleets of reusable rockets shuttling brave settlers to the red planet, where they'll construct sustainable habitats, harness local resources, and eventually terraform Mars into a more Earth-like environment. It's ambitious, visionary, and—if we're being scientifically accurate—fucking ridiculous when compared to the alternative of simply fixing Earth.

Mars presents challenges that make even the worst climate-changed Earth seem like a tropical paradise. The average temperature hovers around -80°F. The atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide and so thin that liquid water boils at room temperature. Solar radiation, unfiltered by a protective magnetosphere or thick atmosphere, bombards the surface at levels that would make Chernobyl seem like a wellness retreat.

Terraforming—the process of making Mars more Earth-like—remains largely theoretical. Even optimistic scientific models suggest it would take centuries, possibly millennia, to create a self-sustaining biosphere. The energy, resources, and technological advances required make it perhaps the most expensive and uncertain engineering project in human history.

Meanwhile, the technologies needed to address climate change on Earth—renewable energy, carbon capture, sustainable agriculture, electric transportation—exist right now. They're proven, increasingly cost-effective, and require no interplanetary relocation.

Musk's Martian escape plan ranks as the least absurd billionaire strategy only because it acknowledges scientific reality and involves actual problem-solving rather than simple avoidance. It's like choosing to build an entirely new house from scratch rather than repairing a leaky roof—wildly impractical and unnecessarily complex, but at least based on sound physical principles.

A Fifth Option: Actually Fixing Earth

Here's a radical concept that seems to have eluded many billionaires: What if we invested those resources into solving climate change on the only planet known to support human life?

The math is surprisingly straightforward. The estimated cost of establishing a small Mars colony ranges from $100 billion to several trillion dollars. For comparison, global investments of $1.8 trillion in climate adaptation between 2020 and 2030 could generate $7.1 trillion in total benefits, according to the Global Commission on Adaptation.

Renewable energy technology has advanced so dramatically that solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels in many markets. Electric vehicles are rapidly approaching price parity with conventional cars. Sustainable agriculture techniques can reduce emissions while improving food security. Building resilient infrastructure costs significantly less than rebuilding after climate disasters.

The solutions aren't mysterious or futuristic—they exist today, ready for implementation at scale. What they lack isn't technological feasibility but rather the concentrated financial backing and urgent prioritization that billionaires bring to their escape fantasies.

Conclusion: Fantasy vs. Reality

There's something revealing about billionaire climate fantasies. They reflect the same mindset that built vast fortunes—a preference for disruption over reform, for creating new systems rather than fixing existing ones, for individual solutions over collective action.

But climate change defies this approach. It cannot be outrun, outsmarted, or individually escaped. Its physics are implacable, its chemistry indifferent to wealth or status. The carbon molecule heating our planet doesn't care if you're on a superyacht, in virtual reality, or bound for Mars—its heat-trapping properties remain unchanged.

The most practical, economical, and effective response to climate change isn't escapism but engagement—not fleeing Earth but healing it. This requires precisely the qualities these billionaires demonstrated in building their empires: vision, persistence, innovation, and capital deployment at scale.

Imagine if the ingenuity behind reusable rockets were fully directed toward renewable energy storage. Or if the logistics expertise that built Amazon were applied to creating resilient supply chains. Or if the algorithmic precision of Facebook were deployed to optimize resource efficiency.

The great irony is that solving climate change offers something no escape plan can provide: universal benefit. Unlike a personal yacht or a ticket to Mars, climate solutions improve living conditions for everyone, including the billionaires themselves. There's no need to choose between saving humanity and saving yourself when the most effective approach accomplishes both simultaneously.

Perhaps the most valuable thing billionaires could contribute isn't their money but rather their belief in problem-solving itself—the conviction that seemingly insurmountable challenges can be overcome through innovation, determination, and focused resources.

After all, isn't it fucking ridiculous to abandon the only known habitable planet in the universe rather than apply our collective genius to preserving it?