Illustrated by Jay Burdine

Taylor swift if she was heavenly color edition

Emma Power

It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift is catching hate about her every move — especially since her career has soared to yet another high with The Eras Tour. What is interesting is the massive criticism of Swift for her enormous carbon footprint, while staying relatively silent on that of her male counterparts and, most concerningly, major corporations, which are responsible for 71% of the world’s global emissions since 1998.

To be honest, it seems like this intense focus on the climate impact of Taylor Swift is tinged with misogyny. It’s true, that Swift is a member of an unattainable class that has the privilege of getting to go anywhere with little consequence via private jet. She needs to cut back — I think most people can agree — but that’s not taking into account that most private jet users are men over 50.

However, we have to point out who she is and what makes her a more likely target for this fire — a young, female pop star that makes many people, notably women and girls, happy. There seems to be some resentment about her specific place in the world that annoys people more than just her carbon footprint. According to the Tab, the top 10 celebrity private jet emitters for 2023 did not even include Swift. Instead, the list was headed by rapper Travis Scott, who emitted more than double the amount of carbon dioxide of Swift. Numerous other male figures like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jay Z and Tyler Perry were on the list, but no one seems to get more flak than Swift.

It really is awful that Swift is contributing to climate change through her travel on private jets and the logistics of moving her show around the world. She has emitted the equivalent of 1,800 average people in 2023, burning nearly 3,000 tons of it. However, what we are talking about here is a percentage of the aviation footprint, which is about 2.5% of the world’s overall carbon emissions. When you put it into perspective like this, the heat and attention that Swift is catching for her private jet travel is not aimed at the appropriate entity.

Instead of honing the spotlight on a popular young woman who is often the target of misogyny, we should focus on the most heinous climate criminals — giant corporations — which together make up almost three-fourths of the entire Earth’s carbon footprint. If emissions continue on this business-as-usual course, the world’s temperature will rise by four degrees Celsius or about seven degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, which will be devastating to the natural world. We would experience severe heat waves, droughts and other extreme weather events that would affect life on a massive scale.

We need to stop being distracted by the small yet shiny sideshow of Taylor Swift that Big Oil wants us to focus on. By being the target of much environmental rage, Taylor Swift acts as a distraction from who we should really point our fingers and resources at. We have to take big steps like moving away from fossil fuels, and that includes Taylor Swift, but she is just a small part of a terribly large problem.

To see change, we have to get almost everyone on board to make emission policies more strict, stop providing fossil fuel companies with subsidies and intensify incentives for renewable energy usage. This climate fight will take all of us, including Taylor Swift and other world billionaires, but if we are going to direct our attention to climate abusers, we need to direct our eyes to the much more devastating offenders.

Ashwini Vivek

Taylor Swift is untouchable. At the height of her career, putting out record-breaking albums one after another and selling out stadiums left and right, it seems that not even the hate she garners can bring her down. Yet, as she climbs in fame with her The Eras Tour, her fuel usage and carbon emissions do too.

From her tour alone, Swift and her private jet will generate over 200,000 pounds of carbon emissions (about 14 times what the average American household produces). This doesn’t even take into account previous years or other trips: for example, in 2022 she amassed about 8,000 tonnes of fuel emissions with an average flight length of only 80 minutes.

Taylor Swift is far from the only — or even biggest — offender when it comes to carbon emissions. Major corporations still make up the majority of fuel usage and wealthy, older men are the primary buyers of private jets. This, however, does not absolve her of guilt and saying it does only makes the issue worse.

From her throne as an esteemed billionaire, Swift has the luxury of ignoring people’s demands to cut back on her fuel consumption. She knows that her status and her fans will keep her protected from the worst of criticism. She represents the unique brand of girlboss feminism, where actual issues of feminism and intersectionality are ignored to uphold the capitalistic achievements of — usually — white women. No matter that those very achievements actually uphold the current patriarchal hegemony or often prey on people of color: on the surface, it is an acceptable type of progress and as such is touted as the ultimate progress.

Those in the Global South are most affected by climate change, specifically due to the excess usage by Western billionaires and corporations. Cheering on Taylor Swift’s success without critiquing her place in a capitalist hegemony does a disservice to all those who will bear the brunt of her — and others’ — consumption.

Swift has had to deal with horrible things during her climb to the top. As a woman in the spotlight, her every move and mistake has been picked apart and displayed for the whole world to critique. From shaming her for her dating history, to critiquing her body, to demeaning her music, Taylor Swift is no stranger to hate or misogyny. Calling her out for a lack of environmental awareness, however? It is not a way of bringing down a powerful woman, but rather a way in which people are checking her privilege, especially at a time when caring about the environment is of utmost importance. It is possible to be a fan of the singer while also thinking critically about the role she plays in our environmental crisis.

It is not Taylor Swift’s burden to single-handedly solve climate change. However, the influence and power she holds as a wealthy white woman is not something she can hide for much longer. We’ve seen the way she’s been able to mobilize her fans from fighting Ticketmaster’s monopoly on concert tickets to increasing voter registration numbers by the thousands. Imagine what she could do if she set her sights on the environment next.