Climate protestors who targeted Taylor Swift's jet handed shock sentencing at trial
One pair of protestors for the environmental activist group Just Stop Oil have been handed shock sentences after targeting Taylor Swift's private jet with orange spray paint in July last year.
With rising fears about the accelerating climate crisis, it's only natural that some feel the need to take action in order to have their concerns be heard, especially as the world approaches a terrifying 'tipping point' of no return.
One of the most popular and well known groups doing this is UK-based Just Stop Oil, which has made its name known across the last few years due to its recognizable orange insignia and high-profile stunts.
Some of these have involved throwing soup at famous paintings, attaching themselves to the goalposts during a football match, and blocking roads with protests, yet one of the most notable involved an attempt to cover Taylor Swift's private jet with orange paint.
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Swift became somewhat infamous after many were alerted on social media to the absurd amount of air miles that the pop star's private jet would fly every single year – in part because she loans the plane out to other people regularly – and this made her a target for activists concerned about the environment.
Just Stop Oil activists Jennifer Kowalski, 29, and Cole Macdonald, 23, took this as a call to action as they broke into Stansted Airport and attempted to spray paint Swift's plane, yet ended up turning the jets of an insurance firm and an investment group orange instead.
As reported by the BBC, they made it through the airport's fence with an angle grinder, and according to the judge, switched targets as they had been spotted in the act, particularly by an aircraft refueller who honked the horn of his vehicle.
Judge Alexander Mills claimed that the aim of the pair was publicity alone, declaring that "what greater publicity could there be than anything related to Taylor Swift?"
The pair had been initially found guilty of criminal damages at an earlier trial – as £36,576 ($48,700) collectively was spent on cleaning the vehicles they had spray painted – they were both given suspended prison sentences and spared prison in this new trial.
Macdonald was handed six weeks in prison suspended for eight months, whereas Kowalski was given five months in prison suspended for 12 months and fined £480 ($639) due to previous protest-related convictions in Scotland.
They have also been excluded from Stansted Airport unless they have a valid ticket for travel across the duration of their suspended sentences.
Laura O'Brien, who was defending Kowalski, argued that the protest had a "conscientious motive" and was "intended to have a minimal impact on the public" due to the private nature of the targeted planes.
"This wasn't about grounding commercial flights, this wasn't about stopping people going on holiday," O'Brien illustrated, "it was about taking a message to a symbol of the climate crisis."
Legal representation for Macdonald also asserted that the activist would be only taking part in "entirely lawful" actions in the future, adding that the short time she spent in custody had been "very salutary."