Celebs' Private Jet Emissions

Here’s How Bad Taylor Swift’s And Other Celebs' Private Jet Emissions Really Are For The Environment
The stakes are higher than you think.

You’ve seen the headlines: celebrities’ love of private air travel is an environmental nightmare. Yet as the ultrarich enter image-recovery mode — shifting responsibility to sponsors, friends, and renters — it’s still business as usual when it comes to flights by private jets.

On July 30 — the day after the celebrity emissions list was published — Taylor Swift’s reps responded to the criticism, urgently distancing the singer from responsibility. Yet within three days of the statement, records show her plane had already emitted yet another 25 metric tons of carbon. (A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in July that Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other people. “To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect, ” they said.)

And the rich and famous aren’t just hiding behind their private planes.

Leonardo DiCaprio made headlines this year for flying commercial to COP26 in Glasgow. While he may have (finally) ditched the private plane, DiCaprio then rang in 2022 aboard another climate calamity: a luxury superyacht that generates an estimated 7,018 metric tons of emissions per year.

“For those celebrities who are not just outspoken about the climate crisis but also proclaim concern about the inequities of environmental racism — the reality that communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities are consistently sacrificed to environmental pollution and degradation — it’s not just hypocrisy that is of concern, it’s the fact that they are directly responsible for inflicting this kind of unjust harm, ” van Rossum says.

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