Taylor Swift is one of the biggest female musicians of our time. With 111.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, she is considered a role model for girls and women of all ages across the globe. While she has done some good, she has also been deemed a climate terrorist due to her excessive private jet usage during her Eras Tour. The big question now is will the Era’s Tour be the end of an era for our planet?Â
Aviation accounts for 2.4% of all carbon emissions worldwide, and the flight data for Swift’s jet was over 1000 times what the average person’s emissions are, which is unnecessary and extremely harmful. Her PR team has even come out and said she has purchased double the amount of carbon credits needed for all her tour shows. (Downer, 2021)
With 283 million followers on Instagram, her platforms have the power to get tons of people of all ages worldwide to be more aware of their carbon emissions. Instead, she took her jet on a 5000-mile flight for the Super Bowl halftime show, unnecessarily bumping up her carbon emissions even more. Individual action plays a huge part in changing our climate and helping the world heal again, and so many rich celebrities using their power to abuse private jet privileges is not the best way to go about doing such a thing.Â
There are many more environmentally friendly ways to travel, especially when leaving a country that doesn’t require traveling over a body of water. Trains are becoming an incredibly climate-positive form of transportation that exudes less of a carbon footprint than constant flying does. To what extent are we comfortable idolizing individuals who consistently attack our planet without speaking out about the climate issues that are already peaking and ruining our planet?Â
Taylor Swift has the power to do something near impossible and make a huge change in the green industry with the use of her millions of followers, yet she remains quiet. While she has used biodiesel in some of her vehicles during her 2018 tour, that only makes a small dent in the damage she has already done. Her team has shut down logs people have guesstimated for her total flight time and emissions, and rather than speaking out, a cease and desist letter was sent to the lone University student responsible for the biggest breakdown released.Â
Influencers and celebrities have an incredible platform we have never seen before which could be used for many beneficial outreach attempts for the green industry especially. When will we stop supporting celebrities with problematic systems in place that continuously play a harsh role in our society?
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