In 2024, Taylor Swift is a very popular conversation topic. Whether you know Swift as the Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter, Travis Kelce’s girlfriend or simply as a famous person, she is a household name that draws attention easily.

Recently, Swift has been receiving backlash on her private jet usage and the carbon emissions she has been producing. The backlash is mostly centered around how she took an eight-minute private jet trip. 

The social media frenzy is mostly based on assumption and has a lot of blame and less open-mindedness. While one can say despite what the jet was used for it is still wrong to produce that amount of carbon emissions, she has purchased carbon credits.

Carbon credits are bought when someone does not want to damage the environment, and the money put towards them goes towards efforts elsewhere to reduce carbon emissions.

During Swift’s tour, she purchased double the required carbon credits to cover her damage. Swift has balanced the harm she has done. Swift’s status is something that would affect her ability to travel via regular airplane as well, so her options are limited.

As someone who is neither a Swift fan nor a Swift hater, looking at the data makes me understand that she is trying her best. Swift is very generous, as she just recently gave $100,000 to the family of the woman killed in the Chiefs parade shooting. This came after she donated $1 million to the Tennessee Emergency Response Fund following deadly tornadoes.

I do not see Swift as being someone who purposefully wants to harm the environment, so while she should be held accountable for her actions, the heat coming down on her is unnecessary. 

The talk around Swift’s carbon footprint is a conversation I do not look down on, but it is ironic that other celebrities with even worse carbon emissions are not being held accountable or even talked about in this light. I have not calculated even my own carbon footprint; I cannot imagine that anyone critiquing Swift has calculated theirs.

Recently, Swift and her team have sent two cease and desist letters to Jack Sweeney, her jet tracker, to stop tracking and posting where Swift’s jet is going.

Swift’s team argued this information being widely known poses a safety risk for the singer, while Sweeney argued it is already infromation available to the public.

With Swift’s history of stalking, this information is so easily accessible and can cause damage. Even though her jet location may be public knowledge, most people do not know how to access that information, and Sweeney sharing it puts Swift in great danger.

Going forward, one can hope Swift releases a statement about her views on how she has impacted the environment and what she is doing going forward to manage her safety.

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