Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [50]
Given Sting’s commitment to rainforests and other environmental causes, we may be witnessing a clear case of one choosing a over b. Let a = actions that increase his carbon footprint and b = actions that reduce his carbon footprint. If he is truly committed to what he preaches then it would seem he would be convinced by the superiority of choosing b. Since Sting acknowledges the incompatibility of his actions with his beliefs, he is either unable or unwilling to act in accordance with his beliefs. But certainly he is able, leaving us to conclude that he must unwilling and hence akratic (weak willed) in Aristotle’s sense.
The point is not that Sting’s actions necessarily undermine the legitimacy of his environmental message. The ad hominem fallacy forces us to distinguish between the person and his or her views. Sting has shed much light on the plight of the South American rainforest and his Rainforest Foundation has raised millions of dollars for rainforest preservation. His akrasia has nothing to do with the logical or factual validity of his beliefs and message. But it does highlight our own (and Radiohead’s) similar struggles to find an environmentally virtuous way to think and live through these issues.
Wake Up (Morning Bell)
Radiohead’s wake up call came in 2005, long after Yorke and Radiohead had become celebrity spokespersons for the Friends of the Earth’s “The Big Ask” campaign. The campaign calls on seventeen countries as well as the European Union to sign up to legally binding, year-on-year targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. So it was natural for the public and the press to turn their eyes on the band’s own carbon footprint. In May, the Sunday Times did just that by quoting Yorke saying, “The music industry is a spectacularly good example of fast turnover consumer culture. It is actually terrifying. Environmental considerations should be factored into the way the record companies operate.” The paper enlisted the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management to perform a carbon and pollution audit on the band itself, and produced the bad news about the Hail to the Thief album and tour.
Radiohead’s response was quite different to Sting’s. In the same 2008 report that named Sting and the Police the dirtiest band in the world, Radiohead was named the cleanest. So what changed in the three years since the Sunday Times article? The band began to make a serious attempt to avoid akrasia. They took steps to make sure they were no longer ignorant of the effects of their actions, and consciously decided to act in accordance with their beliefs and their reason. First, they commissioned their own report on the band’s carbon footprint, hiring Best Foot Forward Ltd, an environmental consulting firm, to produce a carbon audit. In July of 2007 the company released “The Ecological Footprint and Carbon Audit of Radiohead North American Tours, 2003 and 2006.” The results were rather sobering.
Ecological footprint and carbon output reports typically measure the tonnage of CO2 emissions and, in this case, the global hectares, to represent the amount of land required, on a global scale, to provide the resources and absorb the CO2 associated with a particular activity. As it is for most rock band tours, the majority of the environmental impact comes from fans travelling to and from the performance venues. This stands to reason since the 2003 Amphitheater tour drew nearly a quarter of a million fans and the 2006 theater