Almost anyone who has been paying attention to the climate crisis and those who wish to do something about it have been hearing so much about the efforts of artists such as Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson in trying to reduce their carbon footprints. But a recent article in the June 12, 2008 edition of Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/20947828/green_tours_main_challen...) detailed a study led by Best Foot Forward, a group hired by the band Radiohead to test their carbon-dioxide emissions.
This study came to a shocking conclusion: that the artist's are not those who are at fault for most of a tour's carbon emissions. Instead, it is the fans. Fans contribute to 97% (at least for the Radiohead example, the percent would be lower for other bands because they aren't as green as Radiohead) of the carbon-dioxide emissions. This amounts to nearly 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 10,000 tons is equal to around 4.6 billion Liters of gas released into the atmosphere. And this is only one band's emissions! How many bands go on tour per year? Music tours are one of the country's and the world's biggest money-getters for the suffering music business. But what can these artists who are already sacrificing so much do?
Radiohead thought about cancelling the rest of their tour after this information hit, however, they did not and took more reasonable paths towards fixing this problem. For one, they offered closer and cheaper parking to those who carpooled. At some venues, Radiohead reduced the amount of cars in the lot by 10%, which is seen as a huge milestone as far as emissions go. 10% less carbon dioxide gives you 9,000 tons of CO2 and that 1,000 tons is a lot of CO2.
There really has not been much research done into other ways to limit a fan's CO2 output, but there needs to be. Bonnaroo, one of the world's most popular music festivals, has a 7-hour traffic jam filled with people going to the festival. It is estimated that gas-mileage in a traffic jam like this can drop to below 5 miles per gallon in any car. So much CO2 is wasted, but, because of location of venues and other problems such as this, public transportation is near impossible. For example, I live near the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin. This place is in a pretty small town and pretty secluded from the rest of the area. This is a favorite concert place of Jimmy Buffett, Dave Matthews Band and even events such as Ozzfest. However, in order to get to the venue, you either have to drive and wait in a long line or take an expensive bus ride that is not supported by the venue at all (as of yet). There is no possible way you could get to the venue by walking, such as you could for venues such as Radio City Music Hall in Chicago. This is one thing that activists in the music industry are trying to change, but it is hard to tell a city to build a new venue when there is a perfectly good one miles down the road.
Individual initiatives taken by bands include using ship as a means of transportation for sound stages and similar equipment that would require several plane trips. Also there are light shows that entirely LEDs which require substantially less electricity, Jack Johnson's Envirorocker, which includes small steps like recycling and biodiesel buses, which is a debatable alternative fuel as of now because of oil leaders like Exxon who are cutting down rainforests to grow fuel (see Climate Crisis and You, my first Climate Crisis blog at this website: www.progressiveu.org/153136-climate-crisis-and-you). Let me know if you have any other ideas about what else these artists can do and be sure to look for my next Climate Crisis blog as I research more into the biggest problem the world has ever seen. Thanks
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