If I Could Sue Taylor Swift, I Would!

Influential People Need To Have A Higher Standard Of Accountability

Photo by Jovan Vasiljević on Unsplash

Let us start by appreciating Taylor Swift. She makes great music and is basically a genius. The way she presents and markets herself, plays with loopholes in copyright laws, and goes over and beyond to give her fans an amazing experience, is all impressive and admirable. None of this takes away from the fact that she is not good for our planet.

Swift is known for her extensive flying habits and has been accused of emitting over a thousand tonnes of CO2 on an annual basis. In 2022, she was even identified as the most polluting celebrity. In 2022, her ecological footprint was claimed to be over a thousand times higher than that of an average person. She is notorious for taking flights for small distances. Some of which last 10–20 minutes. Just last year, she took a flight that lasted only 8 minutes. What otherwise could have been a 30–40-minute drive ended up being an unnecessarily polluting private jet journey. We can only imagine the extravagance of her upcoming wedding.

Her team tries to portray her as an aware individual, telling the public that Swift is gracious enough to lend her jet to others as well. This is apparently supposed to help. Other than helping her return on investment, it is difficult to see how this would help. Providing others with the tool to create more pollution hardly seems like help and in no way erases the negative impact she has.

Taylor Swift’s concerts are also popular for causing high-scale emissions. The Taylor effect on economies is well known. There is a large crowd of people who are encouraged to travel for these concerts, attending concerts in multiple locations. Swifties go far to put together their outfit, from clothes to hair and jewelry. Taylor Swift’s concert allegedly also caused a bead shortage. A large number of her fans wanted to create jewelry from these plastic beads. Some even turned this fad into a business opportunity, making money from beads created specifically to be worn while attending Swift concerts.

Reportedly, Swift sent certain sections of her concert audience wristbands before the concert. These wristbands were programmed and lit up to create a wonderful luminous spectacle when the crowds wore them together during the concert. This is what I meant, creative genius! Initiatives like these create an enchanting experience for her fans. But do we stop to think how much materials must have been necessary for these bracelets? How were they sourced and what was the manufacturing process? What were the emissions when these wristbands were shipped to different places to hundreds or even thousands of houses? What happened to these wristbands later?

The Taylor phenomenon is not limited to an economic boom, but also an emissions boom. Her concert in New Zealand for example, made a noticeable increase in the purchase of air tickets, which has been named the ‘Swift Surge’. Air New Zealand reportedly had one flight intended only for ‘Swifties’.

There are two primary issues here, one, being Taylor’s own environmentally unconscious behaviour with an attempted façade of care. The other is the blatant acceptance and contribution of a generation that prides itself on being better than the older generations. Coldplay, for example, vowed not to have concerts until they could have them sustainably. They used the movements of fans such as stomping and dancing to generate energy for the concert. This was Coldplay’s own initiative, but if Swifties were to demand environmentally friendly behaviour I’m sure Taylor would not disappoint. It would be lovely to see Taylor’s creativity put to use for the benefit of the environment.

Do you agree that celebrities need to have greater environmental accountability?