Taylor Swift: Climate hypocrite or just the scapegoat?

Hi friend,

A colleague asked me if I was writing about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl this week, and I looked at him the same way he looked at me when I said I wasn't into sports.

Honestly, I hadn't thought about delving into Taylor's love affair with her private jet, but then I went down THAT rabbit hole and here we are (thanks, Adam).

First, some context: Taylor has faced criticism for her lavish use of her private jet. The latest controversy surrounds her 40-minute flight from Japan to Las Vegas to support her partner, Travis Kelce, at the Super Bowl. This single flight generated about three tons of carbon emissions – equivalent to what three average households produce in a year.

Now, I want to jump on my high horse and wax lyrical about her outsized impact on the climate, but I'm conflicted on this one. If I were a billionaire with the opportunity to attend the Super Bowl and watch my partner play in the finals – which is a big deal – I might have made the same choice. Hypocritical, I know.

But this isn’t an isolated incident. Taylor's flights to NFL games have dumped 138 tons of carbon into the atmosphere in just three months – about what 83 households produce in a year. And don't get me started on the carbon footprint for her world tours.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

I'm not a card-carrying member of the "Tay-Tay" fan club, but her journey to mega-stardom has intrigued me, mostly because she's consistently given Kanye the finger ever since he humiliated her on stage in 2009.

Now look. She’s bigger than Beyonce. Twice as big, actually. That must burn Kanye's brain.

Taylor is the only artist EVER to win four Grammys for Best Album of the Year, she’s Time Magazine's 2023 Person of the Year, and she's a bajillionaire with more money, fame, and influence than Kanye would know what to do with.

And if the conspiracy theorists are right and she is a government spy who rigged the NFL as a ploy to influence the US election in favour of Joe Biden, then slap a friendship bracelet on me and call me a Swiftie because another Donald Trump presidency would be disastrous for the planet.

Taylor's carbon emissions would be trivial compared to the environmental impact of Trump’s plans to roll back climate legislation and expand fossil fuel use.

Oh, the irony

"[Taylor] is clearly the hottest artist on the planet and just keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter." – Nine's Entertainment Editor Richard Wilkins

Taylor has a history with politics, like in 2020 when she motivated 35,000 young people to register to vote through one Instagram post. She supports causes such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice, and her ability to engage and mobilise the youth for political awareness could extend to other issues like climate change.

But that would be hypocritical if she's flying all over the world in her private jet (last week, she was in Japan and Las Vegas; this week, she's in Australia; next week, who knows?)

Her PR people are quick to point out that she bought double the amount of carbon credits to offset her emissions from her Eras Tour, but here's the thing (well, two things actually).

Firstly, carbon credits are bullshit. They're ineffective in the fight against climate change and may even worsen the situation by allowing major polluters to continue polluting while shifting the responsibility elsewhere.

Secondly, her Scope 3 emissions (such as those from fans travelling to concert venues) are astronomical. For instance, one Aussie fan bought tickets to all seven of her shows. That's a LOT of travel and emissions from just one person to see just one person.

Easy target

Her immense fame paints her as the symbol of elite pollution. Yet, hers was just one of over 1,000 private planes that collectively dropped a carbon emissions bomb on Vegas. Why aren't we also giving the other 999 people grief? The Super Bowl venue using 100% renewable energy doesn't offset the emissions from those 1,000 planes, which is equivalent to a day's emissions from the entire city and does not count the travel emissions of the other 540,000 attendees that descended on Sin City.

The way I see it, Taylor has become an easy scapegoat. Even Fox News reported on her travel carbon emissions. FOX NEWS! The conservative, Right-leaning media giant that rarely – if ever – acknowledges the climate crisis. Yet, mention 'Taylor Swift' and 'Joe Biden' in the same sentence, and suddenly Fox News cares that the planet is burning and it's all Taylor's fault because she's the "world's most carbon-polluting celebrity". And she supports Biden.

Imagine the impact if Taylor funnelled her carbon credit cash towards genuine climate action. She's proven that she can rally the troops for voting; why not for ditching single-use plastic or cutting back on meat consumption?

If Taylor can effortlessly spark conversations about emissions, including on Fox News, imagine the influence she could wield through her vast social media following and ability to mobilise millions of supporters. She has the platform and the captive audience – why not leverage it for more than just ticket sales? If Coldplay can do it, so can she.

As powerful as she is, Swift alone cannot solve climate change. But by forging key partnerships and engaging fans creatively, her impact could be immense.

— Tarryn ✌️

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News worth noting

🌀 Scientists are proposing a new Category 6 label for hurricanes as storms increasingly surpass Category 5, which was once considered extreme. They say that adding a Category 6 classification would raise awareness that the strongest storms are getting stronger. The Category 6 label could go to any tropical cyclone with sustained winds of at least 310km per hour.

🛢️ An oil spill stretching 12km has triggered a national emergency in Trinidad and Tobago.

🇹🇭 Bangkok authorities ordered government workers to work from home for two days, and encouraged others to do the same, after air pollution hit unhealthy levels on Thursday.

👏 England has created a biodiversity credit scheme that attempts to force all new road and housebuilding projects to benefit nature, rather than damage it. The “nature market”, called biodiversity net gain (BNG), means all new building projects must achieve a 10% net gain in biodiversity or habitat. If a woodland is destroyed by a road, for example, another needs to be recreated.

🦋 Monarch butterflies in Mexico have decreased by 59%, the second lowest level on record.

😵 A new report from the UN Environment Programme found population decline – the start of extinction – in nearly half of the 1,200-odd species listed under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), a treaty designed to protect species that move across international borders.

🐢 Authorities and volunteers in Nicaragua released more than 400 tiny baby turtles on the country's Pacific coast as part of the government's efforts to protect endangered species.

🇬🇧 The UK reduced its carbon emissions by half between 1990 and 2022, thanks to a shift in the energy generation mix. In the early 2010s, coal accounted for about 40% of the UK’s energy mix. Today, it’s at about 1.5%.

🤥 Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study reveals. Not surprisingly, Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science and Donald Trump emerged as one of the most influential figures among climate change deniers.

👏 California's oil and gas regulators have officially unveiled a proposal to phase out fracking in the state.

⚽️ England’s Premier League football clubs will develop their own environmental sustainability policies by the end of next season. Among other things, the policies must build on progress clubs have made to reduce their environmental impact, and a senior employee must be appointed to lead sustainability action. The clubs will also work collectively to develop a standardised football-wide approach to measuring emissions.

🌀 Wild weather:

⚡️ The state of Victoria in Australia recorded 544,000 lightning strikes within a 600km radius of Melbourne in the space of nine hours. The massive storm triggered one of the largest outages in the state’s history. Damaging winds of up to 130km/h took out six transmission towers, uprooted trees, and fanned fires triggered by lightening strikes and hot, dry weather.

🌪️ Wisconsin experienced a tornado in February – the first time on record.

And in business news

🤑 US cryptocurrency producers will have to report on their energy use, in an effort to address concerns about their impact on electricity grids and climate change. The Biden Administration has also tightened limits on fine industrial particles, one of the most common and deadliest forms of air pollution. The new rule lowers the annual standard for fine particulate matter to nine micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the current standard of 12 micrograms.

❌ Barclays Bank will end direct finance to firms expanding oil and gas production and has set out stricter emissions requirements for all energy sector clients.

🚘 BMW and MG have been told to stop electric vehicle advertising in the UK over greenwashing claims. Both manufacturers market their plug-in hybrid ranges as “zero emissions”, despite the fact that they will generate some tailpipe emissions when not driven on their electric motor.

One small thing you can do

Download your favourite music instead of streaming it.

If you share my habit of playing a song on repeat for days, downloading it to your device is more environmentally friendly than streaming. In fact, if you stream your favourite album 27 times, it would be better for the environment to buy a physical copy. 

Streaming music creates up to 350 million kilograms of emissions every year – roughly 777 times what the entire UK live music industry emits each year.

Because lots of little actions combined can add up to something remarkable.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

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