Two activists, part of the Just Stop Oil environmental group, spray-painted two jets orange after entering a private area of London Stansted Airport where they claimed Taylor Swift’s luxury plane was parked.
The two individuals were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and interference with airport operations.
The group posted a video showing someone breaching security and a woman using a fire extinguisher to spray orange paint on at least two private jets.
In a statement, Just Stop Oil identified the vandals as Jennifer Kowalski, 28, and Cole Macdonald, 22, and said they were protesting against fossil fuels and demanding that governments commit to ending “extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.”
The group said the jet had landed “mere hours before,” although Stanstead Airport was unable to confirm this. The airfield, 30 miles northeast of central London, is the city’s third-busiest airport and is often used by government officials and visiting world leaders, including President Biden.
Swift is performing three shows at London’s Wembley Stadium from Friday through Sunday as part of her “Eras Tour.” On Tuesday, she performed in Cardiff, Wales.
“While people are starving, the elite and the rich fly thousands and thousands of feet in the air above us all,” Macdonald says in the video.
“Billionaires are not untouchable,” she says as the video cuts to an image of the duo hugging while sitting on the concrete in front of one of the jets.
Macdonald said in a statement that the rich are accumulating wealth at the expense of everyone else, which is “destroying the conditions necessary to support human life in a rapidly accelerating never-ending ‘cruel summer.’”
“Cruel Summer” is the name of one of Swift’s hit songs from 2019.
The incident occurred the day after other Just Stop Oil demonstrators targeted and vandalized the ancient Stonehenge monument in southern England as part of a wider protest against fossil fuels. The 4,500-year-old stone circle is aligned toward the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice.
This stunt is similar to dozens committed over the past several years by multiple climate activism organizations that have sought public attention via temporary or superficial vandalism.
Just Stop Oil is one of many such groups around Europe that have received attention — and blowback — for disrupting events, splashing paint and food on famous works of art, and interrupting traffic to draw attention to what they claim is man-made global warming.
‘ Timothy H.J. Nerozzi and