cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/upliftingnews/p/2010615/billie-eilish-on-how-she-s-making-touring-less-terrible-for-the-planet
According to the report, more than 30 venues launched or expanded environmental projects in cooperation with Eilish and team.
I linked this article because I think this is exactly what is needed - many people re-thinking hard what they want, how they do it, and how to do it better.
It is basically re-inventing our civilization from building cars and cooking stoves to how to do traditional German Easter celebrations without setting stuff on fire. A monumental task - and so much room for human creativity and ingenuity.
Wait a second, how do they celebrate Easter in Germany?!
Wait a second, how do they celebrate Easter in Germany?!
Piling up a lot of wood and burning it in the night.
Bonfires apparently, at least in parts of Germany.
I don’t see anything significant suggesting they’re being discontinued. It’s a relatively small amount of wood mass being burned on one day a year.
Anything like Sankthans (Midsommer) in Norway?
It’s a relatively small amount of wood mass being burned on one day a year.
Yeah but it is culturally wrong to still burn stuff just for the sake of it. Like a stone age ritual. Like killing a kitten when a baby is born. We need to stop burning things. In the light of what we know, it lacks respect for life and our Earth.
Its okay to have a bonfire. It is nothing like killing a kitten.
It is killing future life. As is needlessly driving a car or flying.
What about all of the other German celebrations where they burn a relatively small amount of wood mass?
Are there that many? How much wood are we talking per person per year?
Some of the articles I saw suggested that it was (at least historically) trimmings from hedgerows, which are too thin/green/wet to be useful for much else.
In a lot of places farmers burn piles of unwanted vegetation anyway.
I was mostly assuming based on my own experience, as a human. Humans love gathering around large fires. As you asked let’s dive into it.
Here is a bit list of festivals in Germany. This will be my starting place for most of it.
Easter - already discussed too much.
Biikebrennen (mostly a regional thing.)
If one includes fireworks… Well, check out the list of festivals above and word search. There are many.
The Tollwood Winterfestival has fire acts (in the photos at the bottom of the page). While these are very small fires, they look pretty cool.
At this point I asked an AI and it listed three additional. Yes it is shameful that I got impatient. Feel free to stop reading. I did my own reason from the names and provided the links.
Walpurgisnacht, Johannisnacht (Wikipedia does not mention fires, but here are photos from “More Than Beer and Schnitzel.com” ), and Martinsfeuer link goes to a random youtube video with a fire (There were enough bonfire related images in my search for Martinsfeuer that either that word means “bonfire” or there are a number of bonfires during that festival).
Waiting on that answer to Easter in Germany
Here, someone sent me this a couple weeks ago https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osterfeuer Basically drink for 3 days and make huge bonfires. Ancient spring ritual co-opted by early Christianity bc how would you get anyone to join the Church if they had to give up their bonfire and booze?
Sounds like a weekend when I was young, lol, good times. Fortunately never caught myself on fire.
This is all little stuff. The smallest part of the problem.
It’s a drop in the bucket compared to water used in desert farming, or energy used in concrete production, or a few dozen other things.Is it bad to do? No of course not. It’d be great when we’re working on cutting the long tail, a few hundredths of a percent at a time. But we still have big major polluters that have an impact on whole percentages of the problem.
Encouraging your fans to use public transit to get to your concert, shouldn’t even be a thing. It should be the automatic default for people. The fact that she’s even doing it at all, only shows that haven’t made a lot of progress on a larger problem.
Like I said this is fine to do. But the article it’s self strikes me as some green washing. I only skimmed it quickly, but I didn’t see anything about what Billie is doing differently in her own travel, or more importantly that of whole production and crew.
Sure, there are bigger things, but there will always be bigger things. Someone, especially someone with a large audience, coming out and saying that this is important to them is the important part. That’s how you begin a movement.
Naysayers pointing out how one thing isn’t going to make a difference is part of how capitalism works; it persists by convincing everyone that there is no point in resisting, that nothing will ever make a difference. But she and others aren’t doing this because it’s going to change everything, they’re doing it because they should, and it’s part of the world we want. It starts with a few people, and then spreads to everyone else. I myself have managed to convince a non-zero number of people to change their ways just like this. You just have to be persistent, and have a little faith.
I realized I didn’t give examples of things I’ve convinced people of, so I figured I’d elaborate–sorry for the comment length; I’m not trying to pile on you, just hoping to inspire others!
- I’ve pointed out to a few people that restaurants will often let you bring your own food containers for leftovers, and sometimes will box it for you, so that you don’t have to use Styrofoam or single-use plastic
- I’ve inspired a few folks to repair their clothing instead of throwing it out by wearing very visible patches on my own clothes. I usually make them look pretty and/or creative, which makes them popular with people
- I’ve steered folks away from Spotify by sharing places I like to buy music that aren’t streaming platforms (I even got a family member a CD player so they could build a collection, and it went down really well with them!)
- I like to make zines going over various ways I’ve found of consuming less and saving money. I’ve gotten a lot positive feedback on them over the years.
There aren’t always bigger things. There’s always one at the top. That’s where changes can have the biggest impact. And where peoples focus needs to be.
“What’s your carbon footprint?” was a marketing slogan from the big oil companies to steer the environmental movement away from them (where substantive change was possible) onto everyone else, so they could dodge responsibility. It worked remarkably well. You still thinking that way is testimony to the fact.
You and I, though, have virtually no say in what goes on at the top, and realistically, we never will. So I don’t really see why giving up work elsewhere would accomplish anything. Which isn’t to say that we can’t do two things at once, of course–you and I can both push for legislation against large industrial polluters, and we both should. Where I take exception to that is in saying that others also shouldn’t take action in their own way as well.
It assumes that work on climate change is a very zero-sum game, in that focusing on one type of behavior eliminates work on any other sort of behavior, and that’s simply not the case. We can do many things at once. It also helps to build a community that has buy-in from each of its members about how things should be–sustainable and regenerative, instead of exploitative (whether of people, things, the Earth, etc), so that the larger things follow suit. This normalizes the behavior and practices and moves the Overton window away from what the big players are doing.
Thanks for the reminder about the carbon footprint slogan. I don’t think it’s wrong in itself, however, it’s just that it was co-opted to remove pressure from Big Oil instead of being used in tandem with the movement against them.
People going to a concert are not in your whole points.
Maybe instead, she uses her voice, the thing she’s known for to discuss how the rich are fucking everyone.
What?
I can’t tell what you’re trying to sayI can see how that’s confusing. Percentage points I mean
And to clarify, I wasn’t trying to throw shade at you, I was trying to throw it at her. This reeks of please don’t call me out like Taylor Swift
Her and her brother Finneas regularly call out the rich and make political comments. Here’s a recent incident.
This is greenwashing. I really dig the food drive that fed people; she could have done more by not touring at all on basically every other front.
