Chris Martin Says Coldplay Won’t Tour for Environmental Reasons
In a new interview with BBC News, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has said that the band will not tour behind the forthcoming album Everyday Life due to environmental concerns. “We're taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial,” he said. “Our next tour will be the best possible version of a tour like that, environmentally. We would be disappointed if it’s not carbon neutral.”
Martin continued, “The hardest thing is the flying side of things. But, for example, our dream is to have a show with no single use plastic, to have it largely solar powered. We’ve done a lot of big tours at this point. How do we turn it around so it's no so much taking as giving?” Find the full piece at the BBC.
While Martin says the band would focus on countering its flight emissions, the most thorough study to date on the subject shows that two-thirds of the live music industry’s total greenhouse gas emissions result from audience travel to shows. When reached by Pitchfork, Coldplay’s representatives sent the following statement from the band’s manager Dave Holmes:
As Chris has said, we have become increasingly mindful of our touring’s impact on the planet. We started making significant plans to improve this scenario while we were still on the road in 2017. For the last couple of years, we’ve been meeting with environmental organizations and charities with the ultimate goal of making our touring footprint carbon neutral. These plans factor in the footprint generated by our fans’ travel requirements—which we hope to reduce through subsidized public transport and ride-sharing schemes. We also plan to invest in environmental projects that go well beyond carbon offsetting.
Everyday Life is out this Friday, November 22. The band will launch the record with two concerts in Amman, Jordan. Speaking about the decision to play in Jordan, Chris Martin told BBC News, “We wanted to pick somewhere in the middle of the world where we normally don’t get to play.”
Along with the Jordan shows, Coldplay will play a one-off gig for fans at the Natural History Museum in London on November 25, with all proceeds going towards the environmental charity ClientEarth. Thom Yorke, Brian Eno, and others recently published an open letter addressing the “hypocrisy” of activist artists with large carbon footprints.
Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
