Sebastian Vettel is used to being called a hypocrite.
The four-time Formula One world champion knows he is. After all, before he retired in November, he’d spent the past 16 years driving a very fast, very carbon-burning car—sponsored last season by Saudi oil giant Aramco—as part of a massive traveling circus of 20 drivers, 10 teams and thousands of staff members that hopscotches across the globe between some 20 different countries each year. By F1’s own measure, in 2019, it accounted for approximately 256,000 CO2 equivalent tonnes, about the same as a small nation.
And yet, Vettel became arguably the world’s most outspoken athlete on climate change and has been particularly critical of F1. The circuit has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, but Vettel does not believe it is moving fast enough. Before the Miami Grand Prix last May, he sported a “Miami 2060 - 1st Grand Prix Underwater - Act Now or Swim Later” shirt. His criticisms hardly stop at F1: A month later, he described Alberta’s oil extraction as a “climate crime” on a shirt ahead of a race in Montreal. And he became the first active F1 driver to join BBC’s Question Time panel, discussing a variety of topics that also included the global energy crisis.
