In a time where the reality of climate change is being made more and more apparent, a growing environmental movement encourages taking steps to protect and reduce the human impact on the environment. Recently, many celebrities have been criticized for their wasteful behavior and destruction of the environment.

Yard, a digital marketing agency, published a controversial article titled, “Celebs with the Worst Private Jet CO2 Emissions.” The study used data from a celebrity plane tracker to estimate the CO2 emissions from popular celebrities’ private planes so far this year and it produced shocking numbers.
Yard reports that in the eight months since the start of 2022, celebrity planes have produced an average of 3376.64 metric tons of Co2 each. “To put that in perspective, the average person emits just 7 tonnes of CO2e – annually” (weareyard.com). This means, on average, a single celebrity’s plane alone annually produces carbon emissions of about 482.37 times more than the overall emissions for one person. 

The worst offenders include some well-known names: according to Yard, the three highest ranked celebrities are Taylor Swift with 8,293.54 tonnes, Floyd Mayweather with 7,076.8 tonnes, and Jay-Z with 6,981.3 tonnes. 

Similarly, another recent event that sparked outrage was a celebrity violation of water restrictions amid the California drought crisis.

California has been dealing with severe water shortage problems that have resulted in restrictions on water usage. The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District has created indoor and outdoor water budgets for each resident, based on people in the household and area of the property. However, despite these strict regulations, celebrities living in the area such as Kim and Kourtney Kardashian and Dwyane Wade have “surpassed their monthly water usage budget allotted by the department at least four times” (npr.org), oftentimes exceeding their allocated water amount by significant amounts- several hundred thousand gallons.

These recent incidents have shed light on the wasteful behavior of celebrities. With growing climate change concerns, celebrities have been urged to be more conscious of the environment and curb their destructive habits.