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Moby Plays 'Carbon Footprint' Swedish Gig

You can't accuse Moby of not treating the subject of climate change seriously. The shaven-headed dance music maestro has launched a special concert campaign to raise awareness of the issue and convince fans to do reduce their carbon footprint.

He played a free concert in the Swedish capital Stockholm Thursday night, the first of three European gigs under the 'Play to Stop' banner. The second will be held in the Hungarian capital Budapest and the third in Copenhagen, Denmark, during the United Nations climate summit in December.

"Travelling is always going to involve carbon emissions and environmental waste and then it becomes incumbent upon the musician to limit the carbon emissions and limit the environmental waste, and to take steps to off-set whatever sort of emissions and waste that do result from touring," Moby said."It's almost like, not to be overly dramatic, but the long-term survival and the long-term well-being of the human race is involved with climate change," he explained. "We all work under the assumption that as a species we're slowly moving forward to better things."

In his blog Moby -- a committed vegan -- said he wanted to address the fact that nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions is the result of rearing animals for human consumption.

"I asked Al Gore about why he didn't mention this in 'An Inconvenient Truth' [as animal production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every car, bus, truck, bus, plane and boat on the planet combined]. He answered honestly, basically saying that getting people to drive a hybrid car isn't that difficult. Getting people to give up animal products is almost impossible. I appreciated his honesty.

"So I guess I'll be talking about climate change tomorrow, and I guess I'll have to mention the most inconvenient of inconvenient truths, that you can't talk seriously about climate change and global warming without looking at the role of animal production."

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Abram

Green is hip now, as long as it involves cool technologies like hybrid cars, solar and wind technologies, and funky architecture. But examining and changing our diet is not. It involves too much introspection and re-evaluation of our place in nature and our relationship not only to the land, but also to the rest of the animal kingdom. It involves re-examining our ethics. That is neither easy nor hip, hence a difficult sell. The truth of the environmental impact behind animal-based diets is too inconvenient to exploit for profit.

August 29 2009 at 6:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stanley Jones-Umberger

Just another inconvenient truth. Gore is still the hypocritical politician he was as a do-nothing VP. He didn't get out of tobacco until after his sister died of lung cancer. He won't lead by an example by going Vegan. He's just milking his cash cow for all it's worth.

However, you can do the right thing. Go Vegan.

August 28 2009 at 3:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Artemis Asproyerakas

Education is the first step towards change. By omitting the impact of animal production from An Inconvenient Truth a huge opportunity was lost to inform millions of interested viewers. Who knows how many of them would have immediately stopped eating meat or how many might have come around later after some consideration. At the very least the subject would have been on the table. People watched that film to learn the truth, not to be protected from it. I believe in the passion that VP Gore has for our planet and I appreciate all that he has done, but the next question to him must be "given the facts as you know them, how can you continue to run cattle?". I think that he must have judged the resolve of his viewers by his own.

August 26 2009 at 2:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply