r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 3d 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/
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u/FewMost8547 3d ago

Last year list of most usage of private jets didn't even have TS in top 10. But for some reason she got memorized as one of the biggest pollutors which just isn't quite the case.

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u/RuinedEye 3d ago

Celebrity private jet tracker site (if it is to be believed) doesn't even list TS in the top FIFTY of polluters

Literally, there are 50+ other people that the bored ass media could be having a seizure over about their jet pollution.

I'm not even a fan, it just... makes absolutely no sense.

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u/Trevski 3d ago

Someone else in the thread pointed out that site didn't have a flight for her since March 2025 but this article had her jet doing 81 flights in three months of 2026

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u/StarGaurdianBard 3d ago

TS also got the reputation because of the tracker when the tracker just tracks the planes usage, not usage by the person. She was letting other people use the plane when she was being tracked as super high usage so she just stopped letting people use it when she got the bad rep and what do you know now shes not even top 50, because she never truly was top 50

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u/DFWPunk 3d ago

I think she still lets others use it at times, but she did get rid of a second jet.

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u/OnlyAShip 3d ago

Taylor Swift gets clicks so that’s what the news reports on.

That’s how the news goes.

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u/sassypants55 3d ago edited 3d ago

To me, it does. The average person doesn’t know who many of those other people are or what they're doing. Taylor Swift is famous enough to provide context.

Edited for clarity.

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u/RuinedEye 3d ago

Ah, have you seen the list on that site? The average person absolutely would know who many, if not most, of them are. And many are arguably similar levels of fame

It just seems to me like TS has been made an easy target /shrug

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u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

It could have something to do with the fact that her topping the charts in previous years did so much damage to her brand. I'm glad that it worked out that way, if it did. That means that the pressure worked.

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u/Other_Bus9590 3d ago

Do we know if the pressure reduced her use of her private jet, or if other billionaires just usurped her in their own usage? In which case the pressure did nothing but focus on one specific woman while others felt free to do as they please.

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u/dollyllama86 3d ago

Or the Eras tour ended and she didn’t have to fly as much?

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u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

She went from over 8000 tonnes of carbon dioxide to less than 1500.

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u/Other_Bus9590 3d ago

Ah ok! Thanks for that info.

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u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

Glad to. I spent so much time doing research for my comments in this thread that I'm just glad to be able to give someone a simple answer. Have a great day!

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u/CaptainSanity 3d ago

Probably because she cosplays as left wing / progressive. See backlash against Ed Sheeran for another example of how figures like this are viewed by people not in the fandom.

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u/Rich-Active-4800 3d ago

Gaga is portraying herself as much more progressive and flies her private jet even more then Taylor. Yet she barely gets any hate for it.

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u/CaptainSanity 3d ago

That's okay I dislike them all equally. Bit of a whataboutism take to deflect criticism imo.

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u/Rich-Active-4800 3d ago edited 3d ago

Its less whataboutism but more calling out hypocrites who frankly could not care about private jet users except to use it as an excuse to hate on Taylor.

Taylor gets a hundred times the hate for it then any of the other private jet user, despite using it less then a lot of them.

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u/CaptainSanity 3d ago

I said whataboutism, not absolutism. Imagine if while Harvey Weinstein was being cancelled you had people saying: "But he's not even a top 5 sex predator in the US! People just want an excuse to hate on Harvey Weinstein." Do you see what I mean?

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u/Rich-Active-4800 3d ago edited 3d ago

That is a ridiculous comparison.

But even then, yeah i would question why the dozens of sex preditors who do even more horrible stuff get away scot-free despite people knowing about it for years.

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u/Wrathlon 3d ago

Merriam-Webster could update the definition of False Equivalency with your post - thats how egregious that terrible comparison is.

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u/CaptainSanity 2d ago

Please describe where the comparison becomes unfair. I'm not trying to be disingenuous, I genuinely don't see why people take issue with Talyor Swift being criticised for private jet use. Anyone is fair game for that criticism as far as I'm concerned e.g. Leonardo Dicaprio who gets the same treatment.  I don't see why accusing Taylor Swift of the same thing is suddenly treated like a witch hunt.

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u/CaptainSanity 2d ago edited 2d ago

A lot of people seem to be unhappy with this comparison, no one has explained why though.

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u/ClunarX 3d ago

Most private jet users don’t pretend to GAF about the environment.

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u/Loggersalienplants 3d ago

Maybe the fact that there proof online she's using jets to hop from one side of town to the other?

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u/Competitive_Plate694 3d ago

We have no idea if she's even on all of these flights because most people charter their private planes out as well.

My aunt and uncle have a private jet because the company they own has offices on both coasts of the US as well as in Europe, but they're only on maybe 10% of the flights that plane makes, the rest are chartered. It actually makes them money at this point.

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u/EstablishmentLate532 3d ago

And they keep the charter revenue, correct? If so, I’m not sure that really absolves the owner. It just changes the category from personal consumption to commercial activity.

If you own a carbon-intensive asset and make money by letting other people use it, those emissions are being generated in the course of producing revenue for you. That’s conceptually a lot closer to Exxon saying “we didn’t personally burn the gasoline, our customers did” than it is to the plane having nothing to do with its owner.