How Private Jet Emissions Affect The Environment

“To put one ton of carbon emissions into context, it’s equivalent to driving the circumference of the Earth one time,” explains Paul Anastas, director of Yale University’s Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering. In the first half of 2022, those 10 celebrities’ planes released a staggering 3,376.64 metric tons of carbon emissions. (That’s about 482 times more than the average person’s annual emissions, according to Yard.)

Now, climate science involves many moving pieces, making it hard to draw direct cause-and-effect conclusions. But research gives us some starting points when it comes to the potential outcomes of sky-high private jet emissions.

Arctic ice loss and its far-reaching impacts

Just one additional metric ton of carbon emissions can lead to a three-square-meter loss of Arctic ice, according to an observational study published in the journal Science. The World Wildlife Fund spells out the implications: disappearing ice in our polar regions is directly tied to more record-breaking heat waves, extreme winters, sea level rise that endangers coastal communities, food instability from changing weather patterns, and ecosystem disruption.

The social cost of carbon

“The social cost of carbon is a mechanism that allows us to try to grasp what each ton of carbon costs us as people and a society,” explains Maya K. van Rossum, founder of the organization Green Amendments for the Generations. These costs can result from emissions-fueled public health problems, agricultural decline, and extreme weather damage.

“According to scientists and experts under the Biden administration, every 1 ton of carbon literally costs $51,” she explains. That means we’re all on the hook for more than $422,000 thanks to Taylor Swift’s 2022 jet-setting alone.

The toll on human life

For every 4,434 metric tons of carbon produced beyond 2020 levels, one person globally will die prematurely due to extreme temperatures, according to an analysis published in Nature Communications. That’s an average lifetime’s worth of emissions from 3.5 Americans — and less than Steven Spielberg’s 4,465-metric-ton jet emissions so far this year.

And the study authors warn this mortality figure may be a “vast underestimate,” as it doesn’t include climate-related deaths caused by floods, storms, or food shortages.

“For those celebrities who are not just outspoken about the climate crisis but also proclaim concern about the inequities of environmental racism — the reality that communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities are consistently sacrificed to environmental pollution and degradation — it’s not just hypocrisy that is of concern, it’s the fact that they are directly responsible for inflicting this kind of unjust harm,” van Rossum says.

The myth of celebrity accountability

On July 30 — the day after the celebrity emissions list was published — Taylor Swift’s reps responded to the criticism, urgently distancing the singer from responsibility. Yet within three days of the statement, records show her plane had already emitted yet another 25 metric tons of carbon. (A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in July that Taylor’s jet is loaned out regularly to other people. “To attribute most or all of these trips to her is blatantly incorrect,” they said.)

And the rich and famous aren’t just hiding behind their private planes.

Leonardo DiCaprio made headlines this year for flying commercial to COP26 in Glasgow. While he may have (finally) ditched the private plane, DiCaprio then rang in 2022 aboard another climate calamity: a luxury superyacht that generates an estimated 7,018 metric tons of emissions per year.