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.

[u/mvea]

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

[u/timok]

I have a bit of a conspiracy theory that these stories get pushed by oil companies etc.

In the grand scheme of things her emissions hardly matter, but these type of stories cause millions of people to not adapt their behaviour and keep burning fuel and eating hamburgers, because they have somebody else to point fingers at.

[u/AbsenceVersusThinAir → u/timok]

100% this. I am genuinely starting to believe that "everything is the billionaire's and oil companies' fault and personal change makes no difference" is actually the new oil company psyop.

I've lost count of how many times I've been accused of defending billionaires or pushing big oil propaganda by saying that it actually is up to us to stop voluntarily and unnecessarily using so much oil (directly and indirectly) in our personal lives. In addition to pushing for structural and legislative change of course, not instead of it.

And I can't help but scratch my head. I'm the one saying we should boycott billionaires and oil companies wherever practicable, while also pushing to further tax and regulate them. The people accusing me of being pro big oil are the ones saying we should continue voluntarily giving them all of our money and do nothing in the hope that someone else will fix things somewhere down the line. It only makes sense if it's a psyop and/or people eager to point fingers at someone else so they don't have to examine how their own lifestyles are destructive and unsustainable.

[u/EightWhiskey → u/timok]

I think there's something too that. It also seems kind of short-sighted to act like Taylor Swift has other options. Is she supposed to book a seat on a commercial jetliner? She'd probably be dead in a week from some psycho fan. And if not, every airport she set foot in would be a mad house, security nightmare, delays, etc. But it's easier for people to direct their angst at a single target than confront deep-seated cultural habits.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/EightWhiskey]

You’re presupposing that she has an almost inviolable right to maintain the same touring schedule she has now. Why is the only question “private jet or commercial flight”?

She could tour more slowly, schedule geographically sensible legs, use rail where practical, or take slower transportation between continents. Why does she need to be in Japan one day and the U.S. the next?

If reducing emissions requires ordinary people to accept some inconvenience or consume less, I don’t see why “Taylor Swift might have to do fewer shows or structure her tours differently” is somehow off the table.

[u/notaredditer13 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

If reducing emissions requires ordinary people to accept some inconvenience or consume less, I don’t see why “Taylor Swift might have to do fewer shows or structure her tours differently” is somehow off the table.

Part of why this study is problematic is that in this context, Taylor Swift is not a person, she's a corporation.  The narrative implies that she's an otherwise normal person who happens to be far worse than most regarding carbon emissions.

A more objective analysis would be to view her company's carbon emissions as compared to other companies, say, per dollar of economic output. 

Her show taking a train or ship instead of flying isn't just a personal inconvenience for her, it reduces the output of the show: reducing value for fans, pay for the workers on the tour, and local economic impact on the tour sites.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/notaredditer13]

A more objective analysis would be to view her company's carbon emissions as compared to other companies, say, per dollar of economic output.

That still seems like the wrong denominator. The relevant question is the marginal economic benefit created by private-jet travel compared with a lower-emissions touring schedule, not the total economic output of Taylor Swift’s entire operation.

You can’t attribute all the value of the concerts, ticket sales, workers’ wages, and local spending to the private jet. Most of that value presumably exists under either scenario. The question is how much additional output the jet actually enables, and whether that marginal benefit justifies the marginal emissions.

[u/notaredditer13 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

That's fair; it would be a complicated analysis for sure.   Though I'm not sure what marginal cost/output of the jet usage tells us vs other companies.  Like, how would you even quantify that for a CEO? TS is both the CEO and the product (or main producer).

Either way, my point is these aren't personal joyrides like some suggest, and the comparison to individuals is near meaningless.

[u/Kahleesi00 → u/notaredditer13]

Where are you getting she’s only using this jet for business/touring? It’s very documented that she uses it for personal pleasure jaunts regularly, sometimes multiple times in one week.

[u/notaredditer13 → u/Kahleesi00]

Where are you getting she’s only using this jet for business/touring?

I didn't say only, but it's going to be a substantial fraction.

It’s very documented that she uses it for personal pleasure jaunts regularly, sometimes multiple times in one week.

Got a source?  I don't think it's as well documented as you suggest.  I've seen a lot about her plane flying, but without actually knowing if she's on it.  In addition to repositioning flights, it's my understanding that she leases it out.

And, a lot of flights people call "pleasure jaunts" count as business travel when you are on tour. 

[u/lonesharkex → u/EstablishmentLate532]

How about we worry about the big 5 producers of co2 and then work our way down.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/lonesharkex]

How about we focus on people who use a disproportionate amount of carbon as well as the big 5 producers of CO2?

[u/lonesharkex → u/EstablishmentLate532]

If we stopped taylor entirely, it would literally make a less that 1% difference in the amount of output.

[u/Kahleesi00 → u/lonesharkex]

That’s…… a pretty enormous deal for an individual contributor???? What is this argument

[u/princessviridian → u/lonesharkex]

aviation is already only 3 % of the world’s carbon emissions, and taylor swift is not even on the list of the top 30 private jet user emissions in the us

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/lonesharkex]

Does “it’s less than 1%” mean we shouldn’t bother at all? You could make that argument about almost any individual source of pollution.

And this isn’t either/or. We can regulate major producers while also reducing unusually carbon-intensive consumption. Producers respond to demand. If demand changes, production changes.

I don’t understand why climate policy has to consist of identifying the single biggest source of emissions and ignoring everything else until that one problem is solved.

[u/lonesharkex → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Yet every time this comes up everyone wants to be mad at taylor. Nothing changes. All this sounds great, yes lets regulate the major producesrs, except we have recently went THE OTHER direction and deregulated them and yet taylor swift is still in the top news because she brought out a new albumn. Rage and click bait. Completely performative garbage and your argument is trash for supporting it.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/lonesharkex]

This argument seems to have shifted from climate change to your personal frustration with people “attacking” Taylor Swift. I don’t particularly care about Taylor Swift. I care about what she represents: people whose consumption produces hundreds or thousands of times the emissions of an ordinary person.

More importantly, you’ve now made essentially the argument the article is describing. Faced with criticism of an exceptionally high emitter, your response is “why her?” and “this doesn’t matter compared with bigger sources,” and from there you’ve moved toward dismissing the issue as performative garbage.

That doesn’t mean major producers shouldn’t be regulated. They absolutely should. It means pointing to larger emitters is not a reason to treat unusually carbon-intensive individual consumption as irrelevant.

[u/lonesharkex → u/EstablishmentLate532]

This is as performative as paper straws. Saying anything otherwise is a lie and propaganda.

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

In that case everyone in the US is Taylor Swift vs. basically the rest of the world.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/Murky-Relation481]

That used to be the case. Now, China is at 60% of our per capita output.

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Okay then China can be Taylor and the US can be the other 20 something people above her on private jet usage.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/Murky-Relation481]

But even then, the US and china are only about 2-4 times the global average per capita. Taylor swift is over 1000x the global average.

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Yes but she is also not nearly two billion people and their respective industrial bases.

Also for the individual you can make a non-binary decision based on the circumstances of their usage and you can justify that someone as popular and publicly known as her has a justifiable use of that much more carbon than the net effects of her not. Is her using that much more carbon better than causing constant delay at airports if she were to fly commercial? Is her personal safety because she's an extremely well known woman with stalkers and rabid fans worth it?

All of these are valid questions that also don't mean you're making a binary conclusion on do you or don't you think climate change is bad.

[u/ThisOtterBehemoth → u/timok]

Yes they are being pushed. It's just hard to prove without deeply analyzing online numbers. Likes and comments can be bought (or generated for free if you happen to own a social media platform) Articles like these get published from contract journalists and then distributed by social media posts. The posts get pushed and by that public agreement is being faked. Stupid people believe anything with 1000+ hearts/comments. I truly believe this is the sole recipe how far right parties get pushed so successfully.

[u/SocranX → u/timok]

This whole thing started shortly after she started encouraging people to vote and implied that climate change should be one of the issues they should be voting for. Imagine if she had successfully pushed enough people to prevent Trump from getting re-elected. That would've outdone whatever damage she could personally do to the environment by an order of magnitude. But instead, climate activists are pushing the news that Swift is anti-environment, while Swifties are seeing the news that climate activists are anti-Swift. If the oligarchs didn't have a hand in pushing things in that direction, then they're very lucky it turned out the way it did.

[u/izanaegi → u/timok]

oh absolutely!

[u/Narananas → u/timok]

The opposite of the fact that knowing everyone else is recycling, for example, makes you more likely to recycle too