On 25 August, the band Massive Attack performed to around 34,000 fans as part of an all-day live music festival in Bristol, UK. Nothing unusual in that - in many parts of the world, summer calendars are packed with such events. But this festival, Act 1.5, aspired to be something different. Billed as a "climate action accelerator", it was the culmination of a five-year collaboration between Massive Attack and scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, UK, to decarbonize the live music industry.
For every one, temporary sets must be constructed, venues supplied with energy, and performers, equipment and audiences transported, often over large distances. US singer Taylor Swift's ongoing Eras Tour alone consists of 152 shows across 5 continents in 21 months. In 2010, researchers used figures from 2007 to estimate that the UK music industry produced some 540,000 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions annually, around 0.1% of the country's total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
Many in the music industry are riffing ever more loudly on sustainability - in no small measure because of pressure from their fan bases. Kpop4planet, a campaign group run by fans of South Korean K-pop music, successfully petitioned the South Korean car maker Hyundai - for which the members of the K-pop supergroup BTS act as brand ambassadors - to scrap a coal-burning plant.
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