Pres08: We've Got Four Jet Airliners, But Why?

With four sitting Senators in the presidential field, something like this was bound to happen:

A flock of small jets took flight from Washington Thursday, each carrying a Democratic presidential candidate to South Carolina for the first debate of the political season.

For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.

No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.

All but Biden, who flew on a private jet, chartered their flights -- a campaign expense of between $7,500 and $9,000.

I've seen it reported that an hour in a private jet burns as much fuel as one year of driving, and that "A single cross-country round trip on a Gulfstream IV ... churns out about 83,000 to 90,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, experts say. By contrast, on a per capita basis, the average American produces 50,000 pounds from all activities in an entire year."  [In other words, these flights each pumped out about 17-20,000 pounds of CO2 for a two-hour flight.]

Now, I don't want to sound naive here: given the time crush given yesterday's vote and the relative remoteness of Orangeburg, SC (and I've flown into there -- it's tiny), it's perfectly reasonable for the candidates to assume the expense and charter a flight to ensure they reached the destination with plenty of time to spare.

But given the financial and especially the pollution costs of private chartered jets, would it have been so hard for the candidates to share one plane for two hours rather than take four simultaneous flights from Point A to Point B?

They're colleagues in the Senate, and, presumably, civil to each other most of the time.  Yes, they're all reaching for the same brass ring, but for two hours, can't they just suck it up, take one advisor each on the flight rather than a whole posse, and do a little good for the planet in the process?  (At the very least, did each of them purchase carbon offsets?)

It's a small point, but it's a serious one:  if you care about global climate change, it starts with your own decisions.