Questão 31 - UPE SSA 3ª Fase - 1° Dia 2023

Text 03

Dear Coldplay, listen to Massive Attack and save yourselves from greenwashing

Lead singer Chris Martin, on their current Music of the Spheres tour. Photograph: Getty Images.

 

1 - Coldplay had a head full of dreams this week when they announced the details of a low-emission world tour driven by concerns for sustainability. Some of the green interventions are well-meaning, other are just gimmicks, such as a kinetic dance floor that generates electricity from the movement of fans. However, the detail of some of the proposed climate measures would appal even the mildly eco-minded.

2 - Perhaps worst of all is the partnership with Neste – a Finnish oil refining and marketing corporation that will provide the band with “sustainable aviation fuel” for flights and “renewable diesel” for tour transportation and stage power generation.

3 - Neste claims to be the world’s biggest biofuel company, processing 1.3m tonnes of palm oil and palm oil products into fuel in 2019, according to Friends of the Earth. Biofuels are composed of animals or plant waste, such as ethanol derived from maize, and are therefore marketed as “renewable”.

4 - The problems start with the huge land area growing crops for biofuel can require, often driving land grabs and presenting insurmountable challenges to food security. Besides this, biofuel production is hardly a climatic or ecological paradise – it causes severe emissions and habitat and biodiversity loss through deforestation.

5 - You could excuse the band’s headlong dive into what critics have called “greenwash” as a rush of blood to the head – had they not announced a pause on touring in 2019 until they could do so carbon neutrally. Three years later, they thought halfway was good enough, with their 2022 tour project to be 50% lower in emissions than their last, with the other half achieved through offsetting.

6 - Decarbonizing live music is necessary, laudable and a daunting task. But, like many facets of the climate world, the real routes to cutting emission are rarely sexy.

7- Coldplay are not the first to explore this, with Radiohead attempting a low-carbon tour in 2008, making use of alternative travel and local equipment hiring. More recent contenders for green rock stars include Massive Attack, who have argued that the challenge is “to avoid more pledges, promises and greenwashing headlines and instead embrace seismic change”.

8 - Massive Attack’s report suggests less aviation, rather than celebrating alternative fuels, is necessary. Scepticism of sustainable aviation fuels, after all, is justified: they have been promised for decades, but only accounted for 0.01% of jet fuel in 2019.

9 - Importantly, Massive Attack eschew carbon offsets, currently the go-to climate solution for most eco-minded people in the music industry. Coldplay say they will make their tour “neutral” by offsetting the other half through technologies like carbon capture and storage. But campaigners and climate scientists have long argued offsetting should be reserved only for “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors – think the cement industry, not gigs. Otherwise, it simply provides a quick fix excuse for the rich and famous who plan to pollute now and offset later.

10 - Of course, not all of Coldplay’s efforts are for show, and it is an admirable step down the path to zero-emissions music. But to really make an impact, more consideration should be put into what they are indirectly promoting with the emissions reductions schemes. Perhaps this could start with a conscious uncoupling from Neste.

Disponível em: http://www.theguardian.com/commentsfree/2022/may/11/coldplay-massive-attack-greenwashing-neste Acesso:

In the passage “Importantly, Massive Attack eschew carbon offsets, currently the go-to climate solution for most eco-minded people in the music industry”.

 

(paragraph 9), the highlighted verb can be translated into Portuguese by