A shorter version of my latest column
-Hayes Brown, Bluesky
Transcription / Alt Text:
Panel one:
[off-screen] Fox News: Taylor Swift's plane is emitting soo much carbon
Angry Goose: Why are carbon emissions bad?
Panel 2:
[Man labeled Fox News being chased]
Goose: Explain why carbon emissions are bad, coward!!!
How much carbon emission do fox news use while flying their people? Or Murdoch alone? Suddenly it matters to them
I hate Fox but they have a point. Preaching about climate change (good) doesn't excuse using a private jet (bad). And obviously the hypocricy makes it worse.
Greta Thunberg made the trip to the US for some climate summin via sailboat. Not to show that it can be done - but to show how absolutely impractical it is. Climate action cannot be about individual responsibility - sometimes we need private jets.
So the rational action would be to start a massive development effort to develop jets that are slower and run on hydrogen fuel cells or something. And find ways to generate hydrogen fuel without carbon. And then distribute and regulate jets.
But that's basically a planned economy, a taboo word to think or say in mainstream. Instead any small advancement is patented which raises the cost of it to maximize profit.
So no, pointing out Taylor's swift as hypocrite is not a good point, it is indeed propaganda to avoid sensible action on climate change. Of course it's way to late now so it doesn't really matter any more.
*It is definitely not too late to mitigate a ton of suffering. *
I've said it elsewhere: environmental nihilism is deeply unethical. There is a ton we can do to minimize damage and restore the environment.
It's such a simple comment, but this resonated in a way that hit me. I feel like I'm an environmental nihilist, and looking at it as unethical rather than just being a result of hopelessness is a totally different way to reframe this. It's motivating to keep trying to make a difference!
Do we need private jets for individuals to take on a whim? Maybe we need private jets for government officials specifically traveling to do work on behalf of the government.
Depending on the level of fame, yeah actually. I wouldn't want to be on a plane with Taylor Swift. Even with her in first class and me in the cheap seats. Imagine all the Swifties trying to get on your plane to see Taylor or just say they were on the same plane, it would be a nightmare. Not to mention the security threats there would be, how many extremists do you think have made a death threat at Taylor Swift? How would you feel getting on a plane someone threatened to blow up because Taylor Swift was abourd?
Like it or not the obsession with celebrity status necessitates things like private jets. No one needs to be as popular as Taylor Swift. That leaves the question of 'is it ethical to become so popular?' on the table but I am not interested in getting into that.
There are commercial flights....? What the fuck does a single person need a whole airplane for?
For some reason I don’t think that Taylor has a whole Airbus A380 to herself.
I was able to find she has a Dassault Falcon, a 12-seater. I doubt she travels alone in it…ever. Most of those seats are full, and I’m sure she’s flying direct and on her schedule.
Now, I get the absurdity of a single person needing a plane. But I also get the absurdity of a single person driving an F-250 crew cab to their office job 60 miles away.
After all, the guy in the pickup could have just as well taken public transit and shared. Except in order to take the train, he’d have to leave 3 hours earlier to arrive at the same time, and he’d get home two hours later. And there are several transfers along the way. Also there’s a store off the highway that he needs to go to, and he cant get there on the bus.
Private transport will always be needed. We will never meet 100% of personal transportation needs with just public transit and bikes. It’s an absurd goal.
The more important thing is that private-transport be right-sized for the individual need. In that lens, a 12-seat jet for a pop star, her pilot, body guard, and entourage, makes way more sense to me than a desk-jockey in a monster truck.
If you want to be mad at something, be mad at the fact that society is demanding that she actually fly all over the world so she can sing and dance in front of them, beholden to schedules that could never be possible on commercial flights. Commercial may not have the appropriate routes, or times, or may have unexpected route changes or delays or cancellations.
And the thing about planes is you kind of need to have them with you when you take off. You can’t exactly fly commercial and then take your private-jet for a specific hop and then go right back to commercial, either your jet stays with you or it dead-heads across the world without you.
Not to mention, this is Taylor Fucking Swift we are talking about. She is probably the single most famous person in the world. I would not be surprised if more people could pick her out of a crowd than they could Olaf Scholz. The amount of harassment she’d be subject to on commercial would be unbearable. She needs to fly private just to preserve a shred of sanity.
But that's not the rational action - we need to build faster trains and fly less.
Yeah, but there are some speeds at which airplanes are quite efficient. One thing would also be to make large airplanes slower, to reduce energy costs. In general trains though yeah. China is building a lot of high speed rail.
State sponsored research is not a planned economy thing. Neither is climate regulation.
No 'sometimes anybody needs private jets'. Fly commercial en masse to at least make it one flight instead of 300 separate ones. In this age of very good remote video calling there is no situation where somebody needs to be somewhere else within 2 hours to the point it is worth taking a private jet for all of the relevant reasons we're concerned with. There were commercial empires spanning the globe long before the internet or manned flight existed and they arguably did far better than today's 'nimble' corporations do. BS rhetoric for people to suggest they 'need' to fly private at all.
She’s the most famous performer in the world.
If she needs to fly private (which she does, her itineraries would never be possible on commercial, aside from the harassment she’d receive from the general public), it’s because her fans actually demand it.
Thats the problem. It’s not the jets, it’s that she’s expected, by millions of people, to stick to an itinerary that’s unattainable without them.
If you have enough fans to be the most famous performer in the world, and they demand you do things that are unattainable without a private jet, then you either need a private jet, or saner fans.
Stop looking at the immediate problem. Look upstream. Don’t build a dam at a delta.
Ootl what's going on and why are people talking about Taylor Swift like she's a political el nino?
she's told her viewers to vote democrat and that she can't contain her political opinions any longer because republicans have gotten so fucked etc. etc., which blows up due to her being a celebrity woman that people like finding reasons to be controversial about
Don’t forget that she’s dating an NFL player going to the superbowl
Which is definitely a psyop to keep Biden in office
She’s got a long list of ex-lovers, and the players gonna play.
Another day, another drama. But not for me.
This isnt a good argument. For Fox News carbon emissions are irrelevant or good or whatever. But since Taylor Swift is saying she cares about the environment and according to her carbon emissions are bad for the environment, it is hypocritical to use a private jet.
The problem Fox News have with Taylor Swift isnt her carbon emissions, it is her hypocrisy.
The problem I have with the "hypocrisy" argument is that, here, it's used as a cheap attack on the messenger.
As in the old meme:
(poor peasant doing labor: "we should improve society somewhat", grinning contemporary person: "yet you participate in society, curious! I am very intelligent.")
I can accept it when influential people, even those that cause a whole lot of emissions themselves, advocate for climate programs. We won't get anywhere if, whoever wants to talk about the environment, first has to become a cave dweller and give up their reach before they're allowed to speak up.
On the other hand, when Fox News, a channel that generally panders to the coal lobby, car industry and oil barons, suddenly becomes concerned about someone's CO2 emissions just to serve up another smear, that is hypocrisy, plain and simple.
Until now, Faux News were ridiculing people talking about climate change.
The problem we have with Faux News is their 'reporting' history and their hypocrisy.
Exhibit A of Republican pretending to care about hypocrisy or a Democrat that fell for Republican propaganda.
Then let Faux News explain why hypocrisy is bad.
The problem Fox News have with Taylor Swift isnt her carbon emissions, it is her hypocrisy.
I mean, no. If she didn't fly on a private jet, they'd find something else to ding her on. Their problem with her is that she's not entirely on their side.
When she’s on tour, the jet when she’s touring on serves the entertainment of lots of people, not just her. In the same way a venue does. When divided among lots of people it’s meaningless fraction of the transportation of the audience.
I also think worrying about a few people is a way to discredit climate change concerns.
Regulations and investing in better energy sources are what matters. I don’t give a fuck about a few rich fucks with yachts and airplanes. I care about policy and how society distributes resources and energy.
All aviation accounts for less than 2% of emissions. Private jets are a tiny fraction of that. But now we’re talking about that instead of the actual issue. This serves climate change deniers. This serves the Republican agenda, and the pertrol agenda. You’re doing that right now.
Yeah, but the strawman is nicer for me to believe cause I hate fox news
Its also funny because faux news caring about hypocrisy is funny af because they're some of the most hypocritical mfers around.
I would accept that as a rationale only if they also held regressives to the same standards that regressives are pretending to have. There are no Fox News segments like, "allegedly 'pro-life' Texas Repubs urge for entangling humans in razor wire, extrajudicial executions by drowning."
But actually, what they're doing is ad hominem. This is not, "Swift is behaving contrary to her message and needs to stop," it is, "Swift is behaving contrary to her message and therefore climate change is a global hoax so that 'they' can force you to eat bugs and have an electric car with a remote shutoff."
It is ad-hominem to start with and hypocrisy and propaganda all the way down to the core. Fox News in a nutshell.
Thanks for making that network seem even marginally more sane – truly not easy to do!
And what about theirs?
You don't get to pick and choose what Fox News has said in the past. Their position is that climate change is vastly exaggerated and largely a hoax, and depending who you talk to they might have a stronger view.
You don't get to forget what they said in the past and present and choose a totally new position, where the main focus is on hypocrisy. Because if Fox News believes what it has said for the last 20 years, then the actual reasoning is that Taylor Swift is acting hypocritically but it's irrelevant. In other words, if they want to have integrity they would need to undercut their own story.
You personally are free to have a position that purely focuses on hypocrisy if you haven't already made public statements on climate change. But Fox News is stuck with positions it has already endorsed and continues to endorse. I mean we know that Fox News has no credibility but if you thought that they should, then this is something they can't avoid.