FEATURE
Artists Tackle Climate Change By Bill Forman
James Marcus Haney
WWW.BENDSOURCE.COM / APRIL 14, 2022 / BEND’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
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As they return to touring, some musical acts are making moves to sound the alarm, and even make their tours more sustainable
Coldplay, which announced in 2019 it wouldn’t tour again until “concerts are environmentally beneficial,” has since begun touring again after taking a number of steps to reduce energy consumption and make their stages from more sustainable materials.
In the current climate of political and corporate greenwashing, it’s hard to gauge the sincerity, let alone feasibility, of the Music Climate Pact. Announced recently with considerable fanfare, the MCP is a declaration of intent by the Big Three major labels (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group) to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Of course, a lot can happen — or not happen —between now and then, so it remains to be seen whether the record industry will make good on that pledge. In the meantime, a number of artists have already begun taking steps to reduce touring’s carbon footprint on their own. The highest-profile among them is Coldplay, who declared back in 2019 that the band would not tour again until “concerts are environmentally beneficial.” Last October, the mega-platinum pop act ended its moratorium, announcing a 2022 tour that’s designed to cut CO2 emissions by 50% compared to their 2016-2017 tour. The 46-date world stadium tour will include “kinetic floors’’ that harness the
energy of fans jumping up and down on them, the planting of a tree for each ticket sold, and building stages made out of recycled metal and bamboo. Fellow Brits Massive Attack, meanwhile, is planning its own 2022 tour, this one applying the principles of a 2019 Manchester University study that the trip-hop pioneers commissioned to explore ways for bands — and the music industry as a whole — to reduce their negative impact on the environment. The challenge, said band co-founder Robert Del Naja, is to take concrete steps rather than “pledges, promises and greenwashing headlines.” We shall see. In the meantime, more and more musicians from around the world have been sounding the environmental alarm through their songs, a practice that dates back to the 1927 Mississippi River Flood that left more than a half-million homeless and was commemorated by Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” and Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues.” Five decades later, Gil Scott-Heron would record “We Almost Lost Detroit,” about the meltdown of a nuclear power plant 30 miles outside the city. Randy
Newman’s “Burn On,” Spirit’s “Nature’s Way,” and R.E.M.’s “Cuyahoga” were all inspired by the polluted Cleveland river that burst into flames back in 1969. And then there’s Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Mos Def’s “New World Water,” Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” The Pixies’ “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” and pretty much anything by Pete Seeger. Cut to present-day New Orleans, where Alynda Mariposa Segarra — the self-described “nature punk” who records and performs under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff — has released “Life on Earth,” which has already been hailed by “Uncut” magazine as the first great album of 2022. “Life on Earth” finds Segarra drawing inspiration from a typically eclectic variety of sources, including The Clash, Bad Bunny, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and author Adrienne Maree Brown’s “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.” “Everything I have is gone, I don’t know what it’ll take to carry on,” she sings on the album’s first single “Rhododendron,” which would not sound out of place on a mixtape between Courtney
Barnett and Lou Reed. “We’re hit with hurricanes every year,” Segarra told “The Guardian,” “yet plant life is thriving. It was very comforting to look at these living beings and be like: ‘I don’t know how to survive this. How the f*** do you survive this?’” Over in France, the death metal band Gojira took a less pastoral approach on “Amazonia,” a single from last year’s “Fortitude” album. “Godly Amazonia / Bloody Amazonia / Mighty Amazonia / Killing Amazonia,” growls vocalist Joe Duplantier over an arrangement that pairs indigenous instruments with pummeling drums and punishing guitar riffs. Gojira are also environmental activists who’ve raised money for causes ranging from The Coalition of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a nonprofit dedicated to “securing justice for the sea.” The latter organization, which has made a reputation with its direct actions against whaling ships, expressed its gratitude to the band by renaming one of its biodiesel-fueled vessels the MV Gojira. Canada, meanwhile, is home to The Weather Station, aka Tamara
