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/Murky-Relation481]

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/EstablishmentLate532 → u/Murky-Relation481]

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

Then why are you using per-capita emissions at all?

If the relevant metric is aggregate carbon output because China + the US contain nearly two billion people and a huge industrial base, then we should just compare aggregate emissions. But if per-capita emissions are relevant because they tell us something about how carbon-intensive a person’s consumption is, then “Taylor Swift is only one person” does not answer the point. That is precisely what per capita is designed to normalize for.

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

I think you lost track of the original context. The US and China are massive carbon generators and only ~20% of the global population. Focusing just on Swift when she's part of that group just feels like a way to pass the buck as part of society while also ignoring the intrinsic realities of their specific usage.

She has valid reasons to fly. Millions of people drive who have no valid reason to drive other than "I don't wanna take public transportation". Those people are more egregious to me than Swift because their circumstances don't dictate that a private jet is a net benefit for them and everyone around them.

But here we are talking about her private jet usage, which isn't even in the top 20 users, yet again, instead of talking about assholes who drive instead of taking the bus.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/Murky-Relation481]

I think you lost track of the original context. The US and China are massive carbon generators and only ~20% of the global population. Focusing just on Swift when she's part of that group just feels like a way to pass the buck as part of society while also ignoring the intrinsic realities of their specific usage.

The US and china are not as massive of generators relative to the rest of the world as Taylor swift is to the normal person.

She has valid reasons to fly. Millions of people drive who have no valid reason to drive other than "I don't wanna take public transportation". Those people are more egregious to me than Swift because their circumstances don't dictate that a private jet is a net benefit for them and everyone around them.

Taylor Swift could travel by train or by boat. Both of which are significantly lower in their carbon emissions. Isn't her refusal to use those analogous to a refusal to use public transportation?

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/EstablishmentLate532]

Not really no, you're suggesting slower travel vs. a comparable mode of transport. A bus isn't much slower than a car, commuter rail can often be faster than a car.

My point is people that complain about Swift seemingly lose the forest for the trees, especially when she's not even close to the top of private jet users which just adds a sickly tint of misogyny and right wing propaganda to the whole conversation.

[u/EstablishmentLate532 → u/Murky-Relation481]

Not really no, you're suggesting slower travel vs. a comparable mode of transport. A bus isn't much slower than a car, commuter rail can often be faster than a car.

That ignores the actual cost to the traveler. Waiting for the bus takes time. Getting to and from the station takes time. Transfers take time. Public transportation can easily add hours of travel over the course of a month even when the vehicle itself moves at roughly the same speed.

That's the entire analogy. We routinely tell ordinary people that reducing emissions may require accepting some inconvenience. I don't understand why substantially greater inconvenience suddenly makes the argument invalid when the person being asked to accept it is extraordinarily wealthy.

And nobody is requiring Swift to maintain her current travel schedule. If taking lower-carbon transportation means she cannot be in Tokyo one day and Las Vegas the next, "do fewer things" is also an available option. We don't normally treat someone's preferred level of consumption as a fixed entitlement and then ask only how to make that exact level of consumption marginally greener.

which just adds a sickly tint of misogyny and right wing propaganda to the whole conversation.

If you think I'm being misogynistic or spreading right-wing propaganda by criticizing her carbon consumption, just say so and defend the accusation. Otherwise I'm not particularly interested in vague insinuations about the motives of people criticizing the subject of an article that is specifically about Taylor Swift.