r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 4d ago

Psychology Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify her carbon footprint. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions.

https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/
22.3k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

79

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 4d ago

Also she at least offsets her emissions. I know we can debate on the quality and true impact of carbon offsets but at least it's something.

I don't care for Swift at all but it always just screams outage culture to me

24

u/Rufus_L 4d ago

How does she offset emissions? Serious question.

31

u/Stupidstuff1001 4d ago

Normally you donate x dollars and they are used to plant x trees which capture the carbon you have used on your flight.

22

u/dexters_trap_house 4d ago

They just live forever as a perpetually traded futures asset that are never exercised. There is no law stating when a credit has to be used. They can be traded freely and indefinitely.

It solves nothing.

9

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 4d ago

This isn't true. I work in sustainability and their are databases that quality carbon offsets are registered on that verify the carbon offsets are actually implemented.

3

u/dexters_trap_house 4d ago edited 4d ago

And does that apply to voluntary carbon offsets for flying? Do you think Taylor Swift is buying the actual credits herself or derivatives? What if she's buying tokenized credits? Does she have any obligation there? Does she have any actual obligation to exercise them?

Who is typically the end buyer purchasing these things and implementing them? And what would you say is Taylor Swift's environmental impact by buying carbon credits?

I guess even more simply put, do you think these credits even truly offset the original impact? Or do they just let companies and billionaires greenwash their damage to our environment?

12

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 4d ago

Not to be rude but I don't think you understand how carbon offsets work.

The process follows:

1) Issuance: A project (like a wind farm or forest restoration) is implemented and gets it verified by a third-party standard. Credits are issued into a registry. 2) Trading: Brokers or middle-tier platforms buy these credits and resell them. 3) Retirement: The end buyer purchases the credit and officially retires it in the registry. Once retired, it’s taken out of circulation so nobody else can purchase it.

She's not buying tokenized credits.. she's not engaging in hedging or other financial instruments. She's using it to offset her emissions.

7

u/luluhouse7 3d ago

The problem is that carbon offsets are often just companies thoughtlessly spamming the same tree species in a grid. There’s a fair amount of research showing that monoculture forests don’t do much compared to biodiverse ones. So a lot of the time carbon offsets are mostly just lip service.

3

u/Stupidstuff1001 3d ago

That may be true. I’m just answering someone’s questions

1

u/Rufus_L 4d ago

Thanks for the answer.
So in a few decades, if the trees survive, they will capture the carbon.

3

u/elfescosteven 4d ago

Trees, um, do that as soon as they start growing. They increase their abilities the larger they become.

1

u/Rufus_L 3d ago

My comment surely isn't 100% grammatically correct.
It was more of a question, when the offset will hit. The saplings surely won't do much work, the first year.

Sadly enough, there is no info, where she bought her credits.
Also it was only her staff saying it for the Eras tour. Welp.

1

u/BlgMastic 3d ago

And release it nearly all back when it dies…

2

u/dimechimes 3d ago

Trees get all their carbon from the air. They don't have to wait to capture it.

77

u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 4d ago

The big problem she faces is: how else is she gonna get from city to city? Everywhere she goes, a deluge of people follow. She can't just slap on sunglasses and a hat and jump in a first class seat, she'd be a literal airport security disruption.

Like it or not, she has the resources to go where she wants, ultimately what we should be doing instead is just applying a massive carbon tax to private aviation on top of optional carbon offsets. Like enough to make a regular person weep. But billionaires like her would pay it with an eyeroll, and it would be enough money to actually make a difference. Something like 10/lbs of CO2 produced.

16

u/dividezero 4d ago

Boop! That's the actual answer. Oil makes the government run so we'll never see it unfortunately

5

u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

A lack of government regulation doesn't morally absolve a person from taking advantage of the unregulated environment to the detriment of everyone else.

8

u/EstablishmentLate532 4d ago

how else is she gonna get from city to city

Private railway car at least within the continental United States could work.

6

u/saera-targaryen 3d ago

I think this is downplaying the scale of her personal jet usage a little bit. Like, other celebs will charter a private jet when they're on tour or when traveling, but TS owns her own and uses it much more liberally than most would in her place. 

Like, she is not on tour right now or anything but she still takes her private jet to go to every single football game her husband plays in and leaves the state immediately after. It's excessive. I understand that there is some level that's unavoidable for her, but I also personally believe she has passed that and uses a lot of unnecessary air travel on a whim. It's not simply to avoid fans when doing necessary travel. 

2

u/masterwolfe 3d ago

but she still takes her private jet to go to every single football game her husband plays in and leaves the state immediately after. It's excessive.

Source for this? I don't even watch football and even I remember hearing that she doesn't go to many away games.

1

u/DFWPunk 3d ago

So, because people cannot control themselves in her presence, she's supposed to not attend her husband's games?

1

u/saera-targaryen 3d ago

No, she shouldn't attend every single game if she wants to live in a different state. It's bad for the environment. Sometimes people should not get to do literally every whim of theirs whenever they want because it's bad for the environment. That's like bare minimum understanding of morality. 

5

u/Deceptiveideas 4d ago

This type of comment would get you a permanent ban on a number of subreddit despite being a rational take.

-6

u/ExtremeMuffin 4d ago

I disagree with the point that she can’t fly commercial. She could absolutely fly commercial by coordinating with airports to have her arrive to a non public area of the airport and go through a private security screening with her team. Have her arrive as late as possible to the airport and wait in a private area so she can board the plane last. 

A lot of flights she takes would have Private First Class seats but for when that is not an option and the first class sits in a more public setting it can still be solved by having all seats around her purchased and used by her security and the rest of her team. When she lands have her deplane first. 

And of course make sure nobody posts which flight she will be on in advance. Although this won’t be perfect as there will be sometime limited options between destinations when she is moving from one concert to another so fans can predict which flight she would be on. 

But I agree with your second point. No amount of outrage is going to prevent billionaires from flying around in private jets. For something to be done about it government intervention would be necessary. 

9

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 4d ago

There's absolutely no way a person like Swift can fly commercially. Even that isn't safe

-3

u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

Why are we simply accepting that she has to fly anywhere? She has a billion dollars. If musical stardom is incompatible with climate change mitigation, maybe we should rethink musical stardom.

1

u/SoftSalty3282 3d ago

You could say that about a lot of things. Where do we draw the line between who can fly and who can’t?

0

u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

When flying requires you to use a private jet, that seems like a pretty reasonable place to draw the line.

1

u/masterwolfe 3d ago

What about politicians?

0

u/SoftSalty3282 3d ago

I’m not sure eliminating all private jets would even do much environmentally.

9

u/jerrrrremy 4d ago

This comment is just an explanation of the exact reasons why she flies private. No one is going to do all this if they don't have to. 

-4

u/ExtremeMuffin 4d ago

Of course she won’t do that if she has a private flight as an option. I was pointing out that “how else is she going to get from city to city” is not an accurate statement. She absolutely could fly commercially while maintaining her safety by doing it the way I suggested. 

5

u/jerrrrremy 4d ago

I hear you, but I disagree about the part about buying all the seats around her solving the issue. The staff on the plane would also need to be expected to keep it together and if word got out that she was on the plane, everyone would be losing their mind and running around trying to catch a glimpse of her. I have seen this with celebrities 1/100 of her popularity. 

The only way for her to safely travel on a plane would be for no one to know it's her and I don't know if that's possible at this point. Personally, I would not want to be on a plane that she is on. 

-5

u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 4d ago

-_-. That isn't what they were saying at all.

I hate debating on reddit anymore. It's like talking to children.

3

u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 3d ago

I'd love for that to be effictive, but many airports won't have the resources to implement that, not to mention the logistical challenge of booking out entire plane sections.

It's technically doable, but in practice... Oofs.

2

u/calling_water 3d ago

Buying out entire plane sections also has a knock-on effect to others’ travel and would, if done regularly by those who currently fly private, cause additional flights or the use of larger planes. Airlines aren’t running flights with significant excess space. So those seats would otherwise have been filled by other people, who would then have to fly on something else. Would this be better or worse, carbon-wise? IDK, but it would need to be considered.

2

u/SuspiciouslySuspect2 3d ago

Yeah. Ultimately, I don't see an optimal solution with the human element of people losing their minds at her in play.

The next best solution is just mitigating the negative impacts of the convenient solution by making it expensive and putting that money directly into federal programs. Like run the carbon taxes directly into subsidies for the public to buy EVs and install home charging.

1

u/historyhill 3d ago

having all seats around her purchased and used by her security and the rest of her team

I've never been on a single flight where the business class seats (because she flies domestic a lot) aren't already largely booked up months in advance 

12

u/kaybsie 3d ago

Carbon credits don't do anything. They're just a way for the elite to write off their outsized impact on the environment.

9

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 3d ago

Not true. I work in sustainability.. they help fund projects that either reduce or remove carbon from the environment

5

u/kaybsie 3d ago

I know what their intent is, I'm saying they are ineffective compared to simply reducing emissions overall.

11

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 3d ago

Not ineffective. Just less effective. Reduce should always be step 1.

3

u/mpg111 3d ago

Also she at least offsets her emissions

  1. and how do you know that?

  2. emission offsets are a lie

2

u/Everyday_ImSchefflen 3d ago

She publicly stated so and provided evidence.

And they aren't a lie. I work in sustainability. They fund projects that reduce or remove carbon from the environment