Two young people received suspended sentences today for spray-painting two private jets at Stansted Airport in June 2024 to demand the UK government negotiate a treaty to phase out oil and gas by 2030.
They were found guilty of criminal damage at Chelmsford Crown Court in September. Jennifer Kowalski, 29, from Dumbarton recieved a 5 month custodial sentence suspended for 12 month, Cole Macdonald, 23, from Brighton was handed a six week custodial sentence suspended for 8 months plus 20 days rehabilitive activity. The two had cut through the wire perimeter fence at Stanstead and sprayed paint from a fire extinguisher onto two private jets parked at Stansted Airport, just hours after Taylor Swift’s plane had landed.
Just Stop Oil pair face trial
At trial, the prosecution claimed the planes required extensive professional cleaning costing about £12,000. Judge Mill ruled the damage too serious for the defendants to rely on their rights to free expression and assembly under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The jury was therefore not allowed to consider whether restricting those rights was a proportionate response to the alleged damage.
After their arrest both were held for 11 days on remand, until released on bail. Cole then spent 39 weeks on curfewed tag (this equals a four month custodial sentences) While tagged Cole was arrested five times for breach of bail, approximately once every two months. Once she was being held in police custody, another time she was in hospital seeking treatment for back pain after informing the monitoring service. None of the five arrested resulted in breaching bail being proven.
Before sentencing Jennifer Kowalski, 29, a former sustainability manager from Dumbarton, said:
Whilst Taylor and her fans have been celebrating her eras, we have entered a new one – the era of global boiling. This is an era that will not end with a rebrand; it will end all others. As a former Swiftie, I know what Taylor stands to lose, because there is no folklore without human culture, no music on a dead planet.
The court system can take our freedom, our autonomy, our dignity, and deny us basic rights. But they can never take my convictions, to fight for a future for us all. Whatever happens in a court room, that is who I am today, and they can never change that.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said
This trial, the saga of mismanaged draconian bail conditions and the sentences demonstrates, again, the establishment will protect those causing destruction and death, that is the wealthy and privileged while punishing those seeking to protect us and defend our freedoms and natural justice.
Huge metrics
In just seven months of 2022, Taylor Swift’s private jet logged 170 flights – 15.9 full days in the air, averaging 80 minutes and 139 miles per trip. Yard, the sustainability marketing firm that compiled the data, estimated her total carbon emissions at 8,293.54 tonnes of CO₂, more than 1,100 times that of an ordinary person over an entire year.
A study published in Nature and reported by National Geographic found that private aviation generated at least 15.6 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2023, with an average of 3.6 tonnes emitted per flight. Almost half of all private-jet journeys were under 500 kilometres, and around one in five covered less than 200 kilometres, distances that could often be travelled by rail or road. The researchers noted that some aircraft models can emit more carbon in a single hour than an average person produces in an entire year.
Featured image via Just Stop Oil
