Live music is a major carbon sinner — but it could be a catalyst for change
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.
Such efforts are much needed. Live performances are an increasingly important source of revenue for artists, and audiences love them, too: the multinational company Live Nation Entertainment reports that more than 145 million fans attended its over 50,000 events worldwide in 2023, a record. 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. Live music accounted for 74% of that (C. Bottrill et al. Environ. Res. Lett. 5, 014019; 2010). Those figures are likely to have risen.
Full article : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02828-1
Live music is a major carbon emitter — by changing its practices, it can galvanize change elsewhere.
Credit: Simon Chapman/LNP/Shutterstock
