The same group of activists who yesterday threw orange paint on the Stonehenge monuments in the United Kingdom and who a few years ago spilled food on paintings by Monet and Van Gogh have carried out another major protest action. This Thursday, two Just Stop Oil activists sneaked into the Stansted airfield (London), where the Taylor Swift’s private jetand they havered orange paint on various aircraft. At the moment, it has not emerged whether the American singer’s vehicle is among those affected. “Private jet users are responsible for up to 14 times more carbon emissions compared to commercial flying. A single flight on a private jet can easily emit as much carbon dioxide as the average annual carbon footprint of a European citizen“, the activists have denounced during this action.
The protest took place this Thursday morning. Its authors are Cole Macdonald, 22, and Jennifer Kowalski, 28, both activists of the Just Stop Oil platform and who, according to local media, were detained by the authorities after the protest. According to the activist group, with this action they wanted to denounce that “we live in two worlds” in which, on the one hand, “billionaires live in luxury and travel in private jets” and, on the other hand, “millions of people are exposed to increasingly uninhabitable situations. “This system that allows a few to accumulate extreme wealthto the detriment of everyone else, is destroying the conditions necessary to sustain human life,” environmentalists emphasize.
It is not the first time that activists ‘attack’ the footprint of the rich. Last year, environmentalists sprayed paint on luxurious Lamborghini in Ibiza, they varnished a private jet in the Balearic Islands and punctured the tires of a hundreds of high-end cars in Sant Cugat. They also protested by pouring cement into the holes of dozens of golf courses throughout Spain. “The richest 1% of the population pollutes the same as the poorest 53%. The rich are a luxury that we cannot afford“, they then denounced from the Futuro Vegetal platform, one of the main promoters of these actions in Spain.
‘Swiftie’ pollution
This Thursday’s protest not only sought to highlight the impact of private jets but also to influence the enormous carbon footprint accumulated by celebrities like Taylor Swift. The American singer, in fact, has been the center of a great controversy for years over her private planes. A report prepared by the consulting firm ‘Yard’ indicates that the Swift vehicle is the private jet that accumulates the most carbon dioxide emissions of all the world. In 2022, it is estimated that the aircraft made more than 170 flights in just six months and emitted more than 8 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of the annual consumption of almost 2,000 cars or a thousand average homes. In 2023 it is estimated that the two Swift jets They traveled a whopping 286,500 kilometers further.
Taylor Swift’s entourage has spoken out on more than one occasion on this issue to clarify that the singer usually lends her private jet to other people, so not all emissions resulting from this correspond directly to her. More recently, Swift’s team has also claimed that the performer has purchased double the carbon credits needed to offset flights for the ‘Eras Tour’. Even so, environmental platforms such as Just Stop Oil continue to denounce the “injustice” that “while 80% of the world’s population has never taken a flight, 1% of people cause 50% of global aviation emissions“.
