In 2019, Chris Martin said the band wouldn’t tour until they could find a way for shows to not only be sustainable but ‘actively beneficial’
Coldplay has announced an “eco-friendly” world tour that is so Coldplay it will no doubt make critics of the band ‘Shiver’ – pun very much intended.
And we can’t be the first to notice this – but it’s a little hypocritical.
While the band will use private jets, they’ll put fans to work powering their performances.
Frontman Chris Martin has already defended the decision, saying: “I don’t mind any backlash”.
At the band’s upcoming gigs – set to take place throughout 2022 – audiences will be asked to jump up and down to power venues in an eco-friendly way. Coldplay will plant a tree for every ticket sold – and in-venue pedal bikes will generate even more electricity.
“When they move, they power the concert,” Martin recently told the BBC.
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“The more people move, the more they’re helping. You know when the frontman says, ‘We need you to jump up and down’? When I say that, I literally really need you to jump up and down. Because if you don’t, then the lights go out.”
The 2022 tour will get electricity from batteries fuelled by the power of fans moving within the stadiums. It’ll be topped up with solar energy, recycled cooking oil and mains power from renewable resources, as detailed in the same BBC report.
Responding to the idea that fans and the general public may still criticise the band for touring – which itself has other inevitable environmental costs alongside using private jets – Chris continued by saying: “We’re trying our best, and we haven’t got it perfect. Absolutely. We always have backlash for everything.
“And the people that give us backlash for that kind of thing, for flying, they’re right. So we don’t have any argument against that.”
Coldplay announced earlier this week that their world tour will begin Costa Rica in March 2022.
In 2019, Chris Martin told the BBC that Coldplay wouldn’t be touring until they could find a way to not only be sustainable but “actively beneficial.” He added: “We would be disappointed if it’s not carbon neutral.”
However, speaking this week, Chris explained they hadn’t yet managed to become sustainable while touring. “In some areas, there’s still not enough possible, like how do you get people to a venue without consuming any power? That’s still really hard,” he told the broadcaster.
Coldplay formed in 1996 and have since sold over 100 million albums worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling artists.
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