Nothing about Las Vegas is measured in moderation. The fluorescent buildings are towering and intentionally bright. Around casino floors, at pool parties and on the Vegas Strip, throngs of tourists daily play chicken with their alcohol tolerance levels and credit card limits.
With the Super Bowl, the country’s biggest annual sporting event, happening in the desert city on Sunday, the crowds (an estimated 450,000 visitors) and parties are expected to get even bigger and livelier.
But it’s not just the hotels and casinos that’ll be bustling in the days leading up to the big game, between the San Francisco 49ers and the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs: Around 1,000 private planes are expected at Las Vegas area airports.
And that’s a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
“The emissions levels of a mega-event like this from air traffic, and the energy use is at least double in a day than it would be on average,” said Benjamin Leffel, an assistant professor of public policy sustainability at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The Super Bowl is one of the largest annual attractions for private planes in the United States. For last year’s game in Glendale, Ariz., there were 562 business plane arrivals at area airports. For the 2022 event in Los Angeles, there were 752 arrivals, according to the business aviation tracker WingX.
This year, officials say the Super Bowl could match the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November, for which WingX reported 927 business jet arrivals at the city’s three area airports.
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