Taylor Swift, Climate Guardian? On Harnessing The Power Of The Swifties

Without dipping into white saviourism, Taylor could make a great climate messenger. But that's up to her legions of fans.

The Martyrdom of an Icon? (Creative Commons)

This is Edition #9 of The Climate Laundry. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you find my work valuable and you have the means.

---

The gravitational power of Taylor Swift is all-consuming. As journalists everywhere know, her fame is such that, stick her name in a headline like the one above, and it’ll guarantee you at least a few seconds of the that most precious commodity: attention. My own, recent run-in with the pop phenomenon’s fans got me thinking: to whom are our megastars answerable? And can their otherwise chaotic power be used for good?

In a nod to that power, an article in Time this week covered the Swifties’ calls for their idol to speak up against Israel’s continuing onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza. In an open letter directed at Taylor, a group calling itself #swiftiesforpalestine stated: “Your smallest action could make a significant difference in amplifying these pleas for pressing for real change. Free Palestine.” The #swiftiesforpalestine hashtag went viral; the article has been shared tens of thousands of times. At the time of writing, no response from Taylor or her people had been forthcoming. But it may only be a matter of time: the Swifties are aware of their power, and they’re not afraid to use it.

I experienced a mere soupçon of the Swifties’ collective force last week, when I made an offhand post that included Taylor’s name. I ought to have anticipated that it would go nuclear.

Writing on The Platform No-One Calls X, I posted a screenshot of a Gizmodo article by Lucas Ropek titled “Congress Just Made It Basically Impossible to Track Taylor Swift’s Private Jet”. The article details how, on May 16, the US Congress passed a law that would make it much more difficult for citizens to track private jets, by enabling aircraft owners to anonymize their registration info.¹ As Ropek points out: “That’s a bummer, since in an age of environmental concerns, it’s been helpful to know which members of America’s gilded class are spewing jet fuel into the atmosphere.” Throwing off my culottes, I tweeted that the bill was: “A reminder that, under neoliberalism, the state is coerced to serve only the interests of extreme wealth.”

The post quickly blew up, and I was treated to the usual buffet of impassioned comments about all sorts of issues, from climate change to Covid. But the commonest refrain was that Taylor Swift is not, in fact, the most highly emitting celebrity. Not by a long shot. More than one comment referred me to the website carbontracker.myclimate.org, which has a helpful—if methodologically impaired—roster of the most carbon-intensive celebrities and wealthy people. Taylor doesn’t crack the top 50.