Environmentalist Taylor Swift took 170 flights on her private jet this year, says report

Grammy award-winning artist Taylor Swift likely did not want the honor she received on Friday – most carbon emissions from private flights.

A report by sustainability marketing firm Yard found that Swift’s private jet flew 170 times between January 1 and July 19, totaling 22,923 minutes, or 15.9 days, in the air. It estimated the trips created 8,293.54 tons of CO2 flight emissions, which it says is 1,184.8 times more than the average person’s total annual emissions.

“Quite a large amount considering that she is not currently touring,” notes the report.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather took second place. He flew privately more times than Swift (177), but a lower average flight time meant he created just 7,076.8 tons of CO2 from his personal jet.

“It’s easy to get lost in the dazzling lives of the rich and famous, but unfortunately, they’re a massive part of the CO2e problem we have with the aviation industry,” said Yard Digital Sustainability Director Chris Butterworth, using an acronym for carbon emissions.

“Aviation is responsible for 2.4% of human-produced CO2e every year, and research shows a vast divide between the super-rich and the rest of us regarding flights, travel, and even general emissions.”

Celebrity private jets have long been a lightning rod where criticism from environmentalists, progressives and political conservatives meet.

Already critical of airplanes as the least environmentally friendly method of travel, climate activists highlight how private flights are disproportionately harmful because their emissions cannot be mitigated by the large capacity of passenger planes.

Progressives see private flights as an excess of the wealthy. An example is the backlash to Kylie Jenner’s Instagram post of her and her boyfriend Travis Scott’s private jets captioned: “you wanna take mine or yours?”

And conservatives enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of VIPs taking private jets to climate-centric events, especially vocal environmentalists.

Vocal environmentalists like Swift.

When asked about the report, a spokesperson for Swift told Rolling Stone that the musician “regularly” loaned her plane to friends.

“To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect,” said the spokesperson.

Yard compiled its report scraping data from the Celebrity Jets Twitter account, which itself pulls from a public database of flights.

Swift has added at least one more flight to her first-place total since the report was released, according to Celebrity Jets.