• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
‘LET’S SUE BIG OIL’: Legal Team Launches Class Action Campaign for B.C. Municipalities June 17, 2022
‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’, Colleague Says, After Brazil Confirms Murders of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips June 17, 2022
Infrastructure Gap a ‘Life and Death’ Matter as Northern Canada Warms June 17, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate & Society Carbon Levels & Measurement

UK Rock Band Gets Serious About Cutting Its Carbon Footprint

December 1, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes

Platonova Alina/Wikimedia Commons

Platonova Alina/Wikimedia Commons

1
SHARES
 

Determined to do its part to tackle the climate emergency, Bristol-based trip hop band Massive Attack has partnered with Manchester University to map the giant carbon footprint generated when bands go on tour, and set out to reduce it.

The collaboration between Massive Attack and Manchester’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research points to a growing awareness among rock band heavyweights of the need to get serious about climate action, reports The Guardian.

The band’s decision to partner with climate researchers comes six months after their revered musical close cousin Radiohead transformed an act of digital piracy into funding for Extinction Rebellion, and a few days after the enduringly popular Cold Play made headlines with the announcement that they would not tour again until they could be assured their gigs would be carbon neutral. Cold Play has since dialed back its ambitions, telling the British music journalism website New Musical Express that they do have a “set plan” to play in a few locations in the United States before parking the tour bus for a while.

Putting Massive Attack’s upcoming tour under a microscope, Tyndall Centre scientists will be analysing data from “three key areas where CO2 emissions are generated: band travel and production, audience transport, and venue,” The Guardian says.

In an earlier op-ed for the UK-based paper, Massive Attack vocalist Robert Del Naja traced a longstanding awareness of environmental concerns that led the band to take “unilateral steps” to reduce its impacts on the road, by prohibiting single-use plastics and travelling by train “wherever feasible”. Del Naja added that the band had “explored advanced carbon offset models,” but ultimately rejected them because “carbon offsetting transfers emissions from one place to another rather than reducing them”.

As for exiting the music tour business outright, Del Naja said that as “a major employment industry with hundreds of acts, this isn’t about to happen”. He added that “given the current polarized social atmosphere, uplifting and unifying cultural events are arguably more important now than ever, and no one would want to see them postponed or even cancelled.”

Instead, he called for collective action to “embrace seismic change” that will reduce carbon emissions across the music industry: hence, Massive Attack’s partnership with Manchester.

Making good on Del Naja’s call to collective action will be an enormous challenge. In its coverage of Cold Play’s planned hiatus from touring, BBC News writes that the band’s 2018 tour, which took in a cool US$523 million, “employed 109 crew, 32 trucks, and nine bus drivers who travelled to five continents, playing to 5.4 million people at 122 concerts”.

But things could be worse, BBC notes. “The ambitious ‘claw’ structure that U2 took on the road in 2009 required 120 trucks to shift it around,” and “according to one environmental group, the band generated the equivalent carbon footprint of a return flight to Mars.” U2 has since considerably upped its green game, using hydrogen fuel cells in some venues and offsetting all its emissions using globally-recognized, Gold Standard offsets.

American musicians are also beginning to beat the climate action drum, The Guardian writes, with “dark pop” teen phenomenon Billie Eilish offering free tickets to fans who “pledge to fight the climate emergency with the organization Global Citizen” and planning to incorporate climate education into her next tour, which begins in March.



in Carbon Levels & Measurement, Culture, Supply Chains & Consumption, UK & Europe, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

David/flickr
United States

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
580
Graco/Facebook
Food Security

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 27, 2022
116
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr
Forests & Deforestation

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
67

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
580
Graco/Facebook

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 27, 2022
116
Konrad Summers/Kern West Oil Museum via Wikimedia Commons

Imperial Oil Backs Lithium Recovery Project in Alberta’s Leduc Oilfield

June 26, 2022
97
pxhere

Environmental Racism Bill Passes Second Reading in House of Commons

June 26, 2022
79
stockvault

Animal Agriculture Could Reduce Future Pandemic Risk, UK Researchers Say

June 26, 2022
73
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
67

Recent Posts

Adam E. Moreira/wikimedia commons

Suspend Transit Fares, Not Gas Tax, Climate Advocates Urge Biden

June 26, 2022
55
moerschy / Pixabay

Pandemic Drives Up Support for Climate Action, Pessimism About Elected Leaders

June 26, 2022
27
hellomike/flickr

No Public Input as Canada Finalizes Climate Plan for Airlines

June 27, 2022
37
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Southeast Asia/wikimedia commons

Japan, Korea Sell Vietnam on Gas Amid Crackdown on Climate Activists

June 26, 2022
22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Barrow_Offshore_Wind_Farm

Global Offshore Wind Pipeline Doubles to 846 Gigawatts

June 26, 2022
38
TAFE SA TONSLEY/Flickr

U.S. Renewables Industries Scramble to Reuse, Recycle Before Waste Volumes Skyrocket

June 26, 2022
63
Next Post
U.S. Air National Guard

Include People with Disabilities in Climate Disaster Planning, Researchers Urge

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}