Bill De Blasio Driven To Gym Days After Preaching About Climate Change

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Days after Bill de Blasio took flak for telling New Yorkers they needed to change their habits in order to save the planet – while he's driven almost every day from the Upper East Side to his Park Slope gym – he signaled Monday he had no intention of following his own advice.

The mayor was spotted Monday morning exiting the Park Slope YMCA on Ninth Street and ducking into a black SUV parked outside. The next stop for his gas-guzzling entourage was a visit to an elementary school's gym class in Queens.

The trip to his Brooklyn Y — instead of the handful of gyms within walking distance of Gracie Mansion — turned what would have been about an 18-mile round trip to see the school kids into a 33-mile one.

De Blasio was spotted outside of the Park Slope gym by New York 1 reporter Grace Rauh:

"Everyone in their own light has to change their own habits to start protecting the earth," de Blasio said on his weekly radio appearance.

That was the same radio show on which he was reamed by a call-in guest for refusing to take the subway — as millions of New Yorkers do every day — to the gym or finding one closer to Gracie Mansion that he can walk to.

The city's tabloids seized on the mayor's unwillingness to set an example for his constituents – a coverage decision that his press staff was dismissive of.

After the video of de Blasio exiting the Y made the rounds on Monday morning, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway weighted in, though the point she was trying to make wasn't entirely clear:

"I wish my life was exactly like everyone else’s," de Blasio told the WNYC caller, identified as "Charles in Manhattan," on Friday. "It’s not, for obvious reasons. But again, the issue is not cheap symbolism here. The issue is, are we going to take action, are we actually going to change the way things are done?"

Lead photo by John Moore/Getty Images