Michael O’Leary is rarely described as an artist. This champion of the free market talks about cultural types in the same language that he reserves for socialists and “eco-loonies”. His devotion to vulgarity is obvious to anyone who has heard him speak and to anyone who has flown on a Ryanair jet, with that gaudy livery and all those crass efforts to sell you a lottery ticket or stiff drink. Last week it emerged that Ryanair is being investigated to see if its policies mean parents have pay to sit with their children, including those with disabilities. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking into whether parents are being charged so the airline can meet its child safety and disability‑related obligations. Ryanair called it a “bogus investigation” and insisted its family seating policy “fully complies with all relevant laws and regulations and saves families money when travelling on the UK’s lowest fare airline”.If the investigation finds Ryanair does indeed penalise parents by making them pay to sit with their children, it wouldn’t be the first time the airline has toyed with the idea of charging passengers for something most regard as a basic, non-negotiable right. O’Leary once joked about charging customers to use the toilets on his planes. It was funny in the same way that stag parties are funny: from a safe distance.These days, his hypocrisy has become something of an art form. Indeed, you might say he is not just a loud capitalist any more. He is more like a radical performance artist.Take his recent complaints about passengers drinking early in the morning. The famous libertarian pleaded for the nanny state to intervene on his behalf. “Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?” he asked. “There should be no alcohol served at airports outside licensing hours.” (Ryanair rations how much alcohol you can have, only “rarely” serving more than two drinks to stressed-out passengers.) If only the Government came to his rescue, O’Leary would not have to divert so many planes and no one would be inconvenienced by punters who think the only way to endure a Ryanair flight is to hit the bar.This situation is what ecologists call a tragedy of the commons, in which the irresponsible antics of a few people – or what O’Leary calls “completely unacceptable behaviour” – have a detrimental impact on many others. Put simply, your selfish actions can wreck things for everyone else.If the logic sounds familiar, it is because climate change works the same way: the passenger gets the cheap flight; the airline gets the revenue; the species pays the price. It’s why we eco-loonies want taxes on jet fuel and why we talk about rationing air travel to protect the environment.Of course, O’Leary has little time for that argument. We know this because he has said so himself many times. In 2019, asked about carbon taxes on farming and aviation, he replied that both would fail, saying: “This idea that by taxing something we’re just going to reduce its use is nonsense.” In 2023, he told the Guardian: “We will not decarbonise because we tax people more.” Only now, this fearless critic of regulation wants the nanny state to come to his rescue by regulating the point at which private pleasure becomes public risk.To be fair, the intervention over early-morning drinking was not the first time O’Leary has betrayed double standards. He often moans about countries that support other people’s airlines, but also complains about airports that refuse to reduce charges for Ryanair. Last month, he was at it again, insisting the Minister for Transport should sack the board of Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) for announcing plans that would, he said, “double” what the airport charged airlines per passenger. In response, the DAA suggested that O’Leary needed to buy a new calculator.Irish people tend to take a forgiving approach to O’Leary’s contradictions, perhaps because he pays his taxes here, unlike so many of our Great Men. This unpretentious bloke, with his Georgian mansion, dozens of racehorses and several hundred million euro is seen by many – including perhaps himself – as a champion of the little guy. As he says, critics of cheap flights (aka “headbangers”) want to “stop ordinary people or poor people from flying” and return aviation to “just the rich people”.When it comes to climate change, the best way to understand O’Leary is to think of him as on a journey. Back in 2010, he dismissed it as “a load of bullsh*t”. He refused to accept a link between carbon consumption and climate change for many years. More recently, however, he has accepted the principle that burning ever more fossil fuels is probably not a great idea. As he said in 2021: “We’re determined to reduce our environmental impact.”Those are fine words. Yet O’Leary still struggles to recognise that the only way to significantly reduce carbon emissions from aviation in the next few years is to reduce the number of flights that people “enjoy”. Last month, it emerged in reporting based on data by the EU Emissions Trading System that Ryanair now emitted two-thirds more carbon than it did 10 years ago. Europe’s number one peddler of hot air runs a business that is every match for his own frequent emissions.This man whose contradictions could fill an aircraft hangar can be viewed through the lens of a 2022 tweet by one John Spaulding: “Libertarians are like house cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.”O’Leary may sound more like a barking dog than a house cat, but his quest to turn hypocrisy into an art form is worth acknowledging.Trevor White is a writer and founder of the Little Museum of Dublin