Have Guitar, Will Recycle - New York Times

Brad Mason mentioned in class on Tue. Apr. 17 that he had come across rock bands doing carbon offsets for their concerts. That reminded me of this article in the New York Times

Like few other enterprises short of a military invasion, the rock tour is designed to convert copious amounts of material and energy into spectacle — and produces equivalent amounts of waste. But in the “Inconvenient Truth” era, when even the oil and automobile industries are painting themselves green, it should come as little surprise that rock — never shy about making grand, self-congratulatory gestures — is working hard to catch up.

Lately, it is doing so with the help of organizations like Reverb, a nonprofit group devoted primarily to the green rock tour.

As for the carbon offsets, though:

Regarding carbon-offset programs, for example, Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution, explained, “In general, these offsets do some good, in the sense they usually help fund projects that are beneficial.”

But, he added, their benefits are hypothetical, intended to defer future emissions, while the actual tours produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases now. “Half of that carbon dioxide will still be in the atmosphere for 100 years,” he said, “and none of these offsets will change that.”