Jesus, as I recall, usually by donkey or on foot. Today’s corporate saviors, however, have more elevated tastes. Last week, Starbucks made headlines after it was announced that its new CEO, Brian Niccol—who has been described as the “messiah” the ailing coffee company has been looking for—would be traveling to the office by private jet. Niccol will be generously adhering to the company’s policy of being in the office three days a week. But since he lives in California and Starbucks headquarters are more than 1,000 miles away in Seattle, a corporate jet is really the only option.

Did anyone at Starbucks sit down with a cup of coffee and think about the optics of this before they made the deal? Because the optics are terrible. In 2018, the company made a lot of noise about how it was doing away with plastic straws and working on a recyclable and compostable “cup solution.” What’s the point of that stance if you’re going to put your CEO on a private jet that produces tons of emissions a few times a week? As environmental groups and plenty of angry people on the internet have pointed out, this super commute is a parody of Starbucks’ supposed “green agenda.”

Then there’s the message this sends to Niccol’s underlings at Starbucks, who are already unhappy with their commute. A number of Starbucks workers signed a petition last year asking the company to reverse what they called “an unforeseen and poorly planned ‘return to the office’ mandate.” Around the same time that happened, Starbucks was facing allegations that it had intimidated and fired pro-union workers. Workers can’t organize for better wages and working conditions! Especially when you have to make sure there’s enough money left over to give Niccol a blockbuster salary deal worth up to $113 million.

While Starbucks is taking heat for its super-commuting CEO, I imagine the criticism won’t bother the board as long as Niccol keeps people buying more pumpkin spice lattes. Online outrage certainly won’t make Niccol want to ride his bike: the super-rich don’t care what regular folks think. They seem to think they play by different rules than the rest of us. Let them use paper straws; we’re going to set the planet on fire!

Forget conspicuous consumption – it feels like we’ve entered an era of despicable consumption. From super-commuting CEOs to billionaires taking joyrides into space to families like India’s super-rich Ambanis throwing weddings estimated to cost more than $600 million, the rich are spending shamelessly. Dwindling natural resources simply present lucrative new markets: the luxury water market continues to grow, while the climate crisis is making droughts more frequent. Even clean air is becoming a luxury.

Of course, the rich have always flaunted their wealth: even trends like “quiet luxury” were still about showing off, albeit in a more understated way. But now that it’s become painfully clear how much their spending is degrading the planet we all share, such excess feels like a slap in the face. After all, a private jet is no longer just a symbol of wealth—it’s a symbol of environmental destruction. All their big boy toys—their jets and their superyachts and their multiple mansions—mean that one billionaire produces a million times more emissions than the average person, according to a 2022 Oxfam report. A million times more!

While many of us are trying to do our part to reduce our impact on the environment, the 1% have convinced themselves that they are such special little geniuses that they don’t have to worry about anything because they will find a way to save the world. And get richer. Private jet enthusiast Bill Gates, for example, has insisted that his excessive emissions aren’t really a sign that he’s a problem: because he’s also invested in climate-change-related technology, they’re a sign, he says, that “I’m part of the (climate) solution.”

If he is so convinced, I wonder why luxury doomsday bunkers have become the latest status symbol for the ultra-rich. Deep down, it feels like even they know that the bill for all this excess will eventually have to be paid.

Arwa Mahdawi is a columnist for The Guardian