My love-hate relationship with Coldplay

Hi friend,

What’s your idea of torture?

Mine is being locked in a cotton wool-padded room while being forced to listen to Coldplay on repeat.

For me, the only thing worse than Chris Martin’s nails-on-chalkboard voice is not being able to bang my head against a wall until my eardrums burst because the feeling of cotton wool touching any part of my body is way worse than bleeding ears and a splitting headache.

I can actually hear the whine through this gif:

Sorry, Coldplay fans (not sorry).

So, imagine my surprise when the worst band in the world did the best thing in the world: made a public commitment to reduce its carbon footprint AND published a report about it.

It was the first time I’d seen anything like it and I’ll begrudgingly admit that the Music of the Spheres world tour sustainability report is impressive.

But before I get into that, let’s consider the significant environmental impact of live music and concert festivals:

• Events like Coachella generate over 1,600 tons of waste, only 20% of which is recycled,

• They also emit 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (according to the University of Oxford, the average festival generates the equivalent of 100,000 to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 when taking travel by musicians and fans into account),

• One festival-goer generates 5kg of CO2 a day, and

• The average festival guzzles up to 200,000 gallons of water per day and the industry uses about 100 billion gallons of water a year.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t attend concerts and festivals. I’m not a wet blanket. I’ve been to my fair share of gigs, including two Rammstein concerts with their awesome-yet-emissions-spewing pyrotechnics.

But things have to change. And if it has to be Coldplay leading the charge, then so be it.

Here’s how they’re doing it:

• Reducing emissions by 50% compared to their 2016/17 tour,

• Investing in reforestation, rewilding, conservation, soil regeneration, carbon capture and storage, and renewable energy,

• Planting one tree for every ticket sold,

• Installing solar panels before every show,

• Installing kinetic floors so dancing fans can generate electricity (now that’s cool),

• Encouraging fans to use “power bikes” to generate more electricity,

• Partnering with BMW to develop the first-ever mobile, rechargeable show battery,

• Switching to reusable wristbands, biodegradable confetti, and merchandise made from natural fibres,

• Rewarding fans who use low-carbon travel with discounts,

• Encouraging fans to bring refillable water bottles and eliminating single-use plastic bottles, and

• Sponsoring initiatives like the Ocean Cleanup, One Tree Planted, lab-grown food, and ClientEarth.

It’s also up to us to make better decisions about the things we do for fun.

Taylor Swift is coming to Australia and one mega fan has bought tickets to all seven of her shows. He’s from Adelaide, which is famously not on Swift’s performance schedule, which means he has to travel to Melbourne and Sydney for the shows and back again. Extreme? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely not.

— Tarryn ✌️

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This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

🥵 Earth reached the hottest temperatures last week, with records shattered from North America to Antarctica. On Tuesday, global average temperatures soared to 17 degrees Celsius, making it the hottest day Earth has experienced since at least 1940.

🇦🇺 Australia has signed up to the Climate Club, an alliance of nations that aims to decarbonise industry and pursue net zero emissions by 2050. Australia joins the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Canada as a club member, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying, "No challenge is more pressing than that posed by climate change."

❄️ Melting Arctic glaciers are releasing ancient stores of methane into the atmosphere. As the ice melts, it creates Arctic springs, which are basically “reservoirs of potent methane” that have been safely stored for millions of years and are now farting poison into the atmosphere.

🎯 Crawford Lake, near the Canada-US border, has been chosen as the site that may define the start of the Anthropocene. The current epoch, the Holocene, started roughly 11,700 years ago. But humans have forced changes to the planet that are so substantive that we've shifted into a new epoch: "Anthropocene" — derived from the Greek "anthropo" for "man" and "cene" for "new". Lake Crawford was chosen as the site on Earth that clearly showed traces of the Great Acceleration (starting with the Industrial Revolution) and could provide a primary marker for the new geological epoch.

🇨🇳 China is on course to reach its wind and solar targets five years ahead of time, which would make it the world leader in renewable power. Yet it continues to build new coal power plants.

🇦🇪 The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will triple its supply of renewable energy and invest US$54 billion to meet its growing energy demands over the next seven years. Despite updating its national energy strategy, it remains unclear how the major oil-producing nation will become carbon-neutral by 2050.

🌀 Wild weather: Torrential rains kill 15 people in China. “Heaviest rains ever” kill two in Japan. Monsoon rains kill 29 in India. Floods kill one in New York. It’s snowing in Johannesburg for the first time in a decade. Get used to it; daily climate disasters will become our new normal.

And in business news

🤝 A group of UK businesses from high-carbon industries, including steel and aviation, have launched a new Green Hydrogen Alliance (GHA) to explore how hydrogen can be used to decarbonise the economy. Members include Airbus, Tata Steel, London City Airport, and Associated British Ports. The UK has also set new limits for emissions from the industrial, power, and aviation sectors, which will come into force next year.

🚢 Negotiators from across the world have agreed to eliminate the shipping industry’s emissions by 2050. The global shipping industry accounts for 90% of trade and 3% of emissions.

🤨 Verra, a climate standards organisation, is consulting on major new carbon accounting methodologies on how emissions captured and stored using man-made technologies should be counted. This is the company that came under fire after an investigation found that 90% of its rainforest credits are worthless. Now it wants a say on carbon capture and storage (CSS), which is itself a contentious topic because it’s eye-wateringly expensive, it will never be a zero-emissions solution, and it’s basically a licence to pollute. I’ve written before about the bullshit that is carbon offsetting, aka polishing a turd.

Well, that's interesting

Turns out there are winter perks: waking up to mesmerising abstract artworks created by nature.

Across Australia, a combination of humidity, temperature, and wind direction result in the most exquisite ice crystal formations like these:

One small thing you can do.

Take a refillable water bottle to your next gig.

Stay hydrated for free.

Because lots of little actions combined can add up to something remarkable.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

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