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travis kelce
A Super Bowl Note to Taylor Swift: Love the Music, Park the Private Jet
Congrats, Taylor, for your talent and decades of consistently great songwriting. You deserve all the accolades and rewards. But I have one request...
Feb 09, 2024
I spent a decade, like many parents, chauffeuring pre-teen and teenage girls around to a Taylor Swift soundtrack. I learned every Swift song as it was released and sang along to the chorus in the car. I even went to one of her first stadium concerts with my young Swifties. It was an extraordinary show.
Congrats, Taylor, for your talent and decades of consistently great songwriting. You deserve all the accolades and rewards. Here’s my one request: Give up your private jet.
Those young fans of yours that I used to shuttle around are now campaigning against climate change. They’re organizing to stop new oil, gas, and coal infrastructure from being built. They understand this is the critical decade to shift our trajectory away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy sources.
Like so many challenges in our country, private jet pollution is increasing alongside inequality.
And they need you, once again, to sing a new song.
I know you’re dealing with a lot of crazy conspiracy theories in right-wing media. In their zeal to denounce you, you even succeeded in getting Fox News to admit that private jet travel contributes to climate change, which is no small feat!
But it’s true. Private jets emit 10 to 20 times more pollutants per passenger than commercial jets. You know it’s wrong — that’s why you cover your face [with an umbrella] when you’re disembarking.
As thousands of private jets — including yours — head to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, we should focus our attention on the considerable harms of this most ecologically damaging form of transportation. Apparently, billionaires are having a hard time finding a parking spot for their jets for the big event. (But the NFL has reportedly reserved you a spot since your interest in football, or at least Travis Kelce, is the biggest audience boost they’ve had in decades.)
We all have that experience of wishing we could be two places at once. I’ve been on a work trip and wished I could zip home for my daughter’s soccer game. But if you really do fly from Tokyo to Las Vegas and then to Melbourne within a few days, you’ll burn an estimated 8,800 gallons of jet fuel and create about 90 tons of carbon emissions. That’s the equivalent of the entire carbon burn of six average U.S. households for an entire year.
Like so many challenges in our country, private jet pollution is increasing alongside inequality. As wealth has concentrated in fewer hands over the last several decades, the demand for private jets has soared. According to a report I co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies, High Flyers 2023, the number of private jets has grown 133 percent over the last two decades. And just 1 percent of flyers now contribute half of all carbon emissions from aviation.
At a time when our country should be investing bigger in renewable infrastructure, this demand is driving a push to expand private jet infrastructure instead.
Outside Boston, a private developer wants to triple the private jet hangar capacity at Hanscom Field, the region’s largest private jet airport. Our research found that at least half the flights in and out of Hanscom Field are to luxury and recreation destinations, such as Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Aspen, and West Palm Beach.
More and more Americans are asking: Should we set off a carbon bomb of emissions so the ultra-rich can fly to their vacation destinations? And more and more are answering no. In Massachusetts, a grassroots coalition called Stop Private Jet Expansion at Hanscom and Everywhere is calling on the governor to reject the Hanscom project for environmental reasons.
The private jet lobby has answered these concerns with greenwashing spin about “sustainable aviation fuels.” They’d like us all to believe we’ll be jetting around on food waste in a decade. But scientific bodies, such as the UK Royal Society, have pointed out that achieving “jet zero” would require shifting millions of acres of agricultural land out of food production and into fuel. It’s just not realistic.
More and more Americans are asking: Should we set off a carbon bomb of emissions so the ultra-rich can fly to their vacation destinations?
Unfortunately, “carbon offsets” don’t meaningfully address the problem either. Research shows these incentives, where polluting industries or their customers pay a little extra to “offset” their emissions with conservation efforts, don’t reduce deforestation or other climate change drivers.
Banning or restricting private jet travel would be one of the easiest paths to reducing emissions if it weren’t a luxury consumed by the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet. But climate advocates are still working to find a way. Here in the U.S., we’re trying to make sure private jet users pay the real financial and ecological costs of their luxury travel. In Congress, Senator Ed Markey and Rep. Nydia Velazquez have proposed hiking the tax on private jet fuel.
Banning or restricting private jet travel would be one of the easiest paths to reducing emissions if it weren’t a luxury consumed by the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet.
But there’s good news, Taylor: If you ground your jet, you won’t be alone. Lots of people are rethinking jet travel. The Premier League UK soccer teams are considering a ban on short-hop flights. And after learning about the climate costs of private jet travel, millionaire Stephen Prince publicly decided to sell his jet.
What’s more, a generation of music stars toured without jets, taking the proverbial tour bus. And it sparked a lot of great songs about this amazing land. Taylor, if you want to be green, stay on the ground. Your fans will love you and the future generations will thank you.
I believe there’s a song there.
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'Wildest Dreams': MAGA Movement Melts Down Over Taylor Swift and Joe Biden
From Charlie Kirk to Vivek Ramaswamy, right-wingers are publicly panicking that the pop star may endorse the Democratic president.
Jan 30, 2024
Perhaps to distract from former U.S. President Donald Trump's 91 felony charges or the unpopularity of GOP policies, or simply fearful of Taylor Swift's deeply dedicated fanbase, right-wing public figures are ramping up attacks on the music industry giant amid speculation that she may endorse Democratic President Joe Biden for reelection.
Reporting Monday on the president's "anti-Trump battle plan," The New York Timesdetailed that "Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers, and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: the global superstar."
A day earlier, Swift attended the game in which her pro-Bud Light and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine boyfriend, Travis Kelce, helped the Kansas City Chiefs advance to Super Bowl LVIII—after which, as Rolling Stonenoted Monday, "long-standing conspiracy theories around the NFL's 'scriptwriting' for football seasons clashed with right-wing conspiracy theorists claiming Swift's involvement with Kelce is part of a deep state plot to gin up support" for Biden, whom the pop star endorsed in 2020.
Because of Swift and Kelce, some Republicans prepping for the professional football season's finale next month are "now rooting for a team from the city they portray as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah: San Francisco," Politicopointed out Tuesday.
As Rolling Stone reported:
Far-right influencer Rogan O'Handley went so far as to suggest that if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce would trigger an apocalyptic chain of events that would kill millions. "You MUST defeat the Chiefs," O'Handley wrote in an X post addressed to the San Francisco 49ers. "If you don't, Mr. Pfizer and his girlfriend are going to tour the country as 'world champions' helping elect Joe Biden WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die. The fate of the free world rests upon your shoulders."
Former Republican Illinois congressional candidate Jack Lombardi II similarly said in a series of social media posts following the Chiefs and 49ers games that "I have never been more convinced that the Super Bowl is rigged" and "Taylor Swift is nothing more than a controlled influencer who has been put to work by those who seek to destroy America."
Responding on Monday to a social media post from far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—who earlier this month dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump—also suggested that the Super Bowl will be rigged for the Chiefs and predicted a forthcoming Biden endorsement from the power couple.
Semafor's David Weigel shared on social media multiple examples of right-wingers melting down over the pop star and the president during Turning Point Action's Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas on Monday and Tuesday.
According to Weigel, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk warned of Swift's possible Biden endorsement, saying: "That will be a tsunami that will be very difficult to thwart... We better be prepared. It seems as though things are aligning for that."
A Tuesday video shows Posobiec highlighting Swift's history of boosting voter registrations. On National Voting Day last September, Swift took to Instagram, encouraging Americans to "raise your voices" and register through the nonprofit Vote.org, which said her post was followed by over 35,000 registrations.
Posobiec also directed conference attendees to Swift's 2020 support for Biden and her first overtly political comments in 2018, when she posted on Instagram that she would be voting for Democratic congressional candidates in Tennessee and condemned Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who was ultimately elected to the U.S. Senate.
A 2020 documentary about Swift, Miss Americana, features a discussion preceding that post. In the film, Swift makes her opposition to Trump clear and expresses regret that she didn't speak out against the ex-president during the 2016 cycle.
Trump's campaign on Tuesday dismissed the anticipated impact of Swift weighing in on November's election, with senior adviser Jason Miller tellingRolling Stone that "Joe Biden might be counting on Taylor Swift to save him, but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.'" However, Swift's star power has reportedly frustrated the former president.
Along with pointing to "members of MAGAland's upper crust... plotting to declare—as one source close to Donald Trump calls it—a 'holy war' on the pop megastar," the outlet cites unnamed sources who said the GOP front-runner has "privately claimed that he is 'more popular' than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does" as well as "commented to some confidants that it 'obviously' made no sense that he was not named Time magazine's 2023 Person of the Year."
Meanwhile, "the Biden crew and its alumni network have watched it all with eye rolls and a touch of mockery," and worked with celebrities regularly involved in Democratic politics, like Sophia Bush and Kerry Washington, according to Politico's "West Wing Playbook."
The newsletter added that "as much as the Swift-Kelce drama says about our politics, it may say more about our culture—in particular, the reaction to a powerful woman finding her way into the spotlight reserved for the ultimate male sport."
As Media Matters for America laid out in a roundup late last year, "right-wing media spent 2023 lobbing sexist attacks" at Swift, painting her as "a fake Christian, a Democratic agent, and possibly a witch" who is "ruining football by dating an NFL player."
Continuing the trend in the new year, Fox News' Jesse Watters claimed earlier this month that "around four years ago, the Pentagon's psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset."
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh responded with a reference to one of her songs, saying that "as for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off."
Despite that statement and even some conservatives pleading for their ideological allies to "STOP BEING NUTS," right-wing commentator Benny Johnson shared a nearly 42-minute video on social media Monday, writing: "It's All FAKE. Taylor Swift EXPOSED as a FED OP To RIG 2024 Election for Biden | Pentagon ADMITS It."
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