Taylor Swift may have only one private jet left, but America’s biggest pop star is still getting pushback for her liberal use of the most polluting mode of transportation on the planet.
Swift recently downsized from two private jets to just one amid uproar over the star’s reliance on this exclusive and polluting form of travel. She has kept the larger jet, a Dassault Falcon 7X, which can carry up to 16 passengers, but dropped a Dassault 900 late last month, according to Business Insider.
Swift, a darling of liberals for her advocacy for voting rights and LGBTQ equality, has been criticized by the same constituency for her liberal use of the jet. Private jets are the most polluting mode of transportation in the world, emitting as much carbon pollution in 2022 as the entire country of Denmark, according to the Guardian. That year, Swift was named the top most polluting celebrity—beating out Kylie Jenner, who was pilloried for taking a 17-minute flight in her private jet, and Drake, whose customized Boeing 767 was moved several times while empty as it was looking for parking.
“Private jets emit about 10 times more pollutants than commercial planes, per passenger,” Omar Ocampo, a researcher at Inequality.org who studies private flights, told Fortune. “The people who fly private [are] multimillionaires. Their median net worth is between $140 [million] and $190 million.”
While that’s less than 1% of the global population, “they’re having a disproportionate effect on climate change,” Ocampo said.
Now, two members of Congress have a plan to make that effect much more expensive for the jet set.
Celebrity draws to private jet-setting
Still, Swift and other performers might have a better claim than the simply rich to private flying, because when on tour, they have to cover large distances in a relatively short time and many prefer the privacy that you can’t get while flying commercial.
Someone as famous as Swift is likely to attract stalkers, and the star’s representatives cited this as a reason to pay less attention to her jet use. In a cease-and-desist letter Swift’s lawyers sent to celebrity jet tracker Jack Sweeney, they claimed his jet-tracking tool exacerbates Swift’s “constant state of fear for her personal safety.” (Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has also tangled with Elon Musk, who accused the tracker of revealing his “assassination coordinates.”)
For such reasons, it may be impossible to eliminate all uses of private jets. But some members of Congress now want to make it dramatically more expensive for the elite to fly solo. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill last summer that would increase the excise taxes paid on jets by a factor of about 10.
The cheekily named FATCATS Act would tax private jets $1.95 for every gallon of jet fuel, up from 22 cents currently, and use the revenue to fund decarbonization initiatives and public transportation.
Here’s the potential impact on Swift
Swift flew 5,477 miles from Los Angeles to Tokyo Monday after the Grammys, and flew back on a charter flight. (She will drive from L.A. to Las Vegas, according to Sweeney’s account, because all the private-jet parking in Vegas is already full.) After watching boyfriend Travis Kelce compete in the Super Bowl, Swift is then scheduled to fly to Melbourne, Australia, for the next leg of her tour, the Daily Mail noted.
Those three flights add up to about 28 hours of flight time, or over 11,000 gallons of jet fuel consumed, based on fuel efficiency data from Jet Advisors.
Under Markey’s bill, Swift’s travel would yield $21,000 in tax revenue. Under the current system, she pays just $2,420 in jet fuel taxes.
Swift’s publicist has previously said the star paid to offset the emissions generated by her tour, before it began March 2023, to account for the emissions of her flights. She has also denied the charge that Swift is solely responsible for the jet’s emissions, telling outlets that Swift frequently lends out her jet to others.
Either way, Swift’s offloading of half her fleet could be a positive step for the climate, said Ocampo.
“In theory, her having one less aircraft is good for the environment, but what really matters is how often you use it,” he said.
And while Swift has sharply cut back on her high-flying behavior since 2022, according to the Guardian, the same can’t be said for other members of the flying 1%.
“Private jet flight operations, in 2023, they were still higher than pre-COVID levels,” said Ocampo. “We should take seriously how to de-incentivize private jet travel and raise revenue from it.”
