Sunday, March 23, 2008

Thom Yorke dons the green eye-shield

Today's Observer magazine has been guest-edited by Thom Yorke; it's a climate change special and in his introduction he suggests that his larger-than-average global footprint is a help, rather than a hindrance, in spreading the message:

At first I told Friends of the Earth that I was absolutely the wrong person to be associated with their campaign. I've based my life on touring and the rock industry is a high energy-consuming industry. But they persuaded me that that was exactly why it was a good idea for me to be involved, that they didn't want to present a holier-than-thou message.

That's true - and makes a certain degree of sense - although how far would you take that? There's a sense that this is the environmental equivalent of those times when Keith Richards tells pop stars to not take drugs, isn't it?

But, for a whiskey priest, Yorke is pretty passionate and takes well to his brief - interviewing Ken Livingstone about plans to bring bike rental to central London, for example. Sadly, he doesn't get his hands dirty with testing alternatives to bin liners.


2 comments:

Olive said...

How exactly does being a hypocrite make Yorke the ideal poster boy for climate change?

Ken Livingstone showed his true colours, though:
"I'm quite prepared to have a nanny state if it means we survive. I'd rather have a nanny state and live than we all burn in some catastrophic climate change disaster."
Fuck you, Ken.

Sorry, too gripped in a teeth grinding rage to approach today's Observer with anything approaching sense. The piece on food miles, which is a total reversal of the stance the paper has been taking for months will have me punching endangered species ofr the rest of the week.


Grrrrr.

Chris Brown said...

I think the point about Yorke is that he at least acknowledges his own contribution to the problem; as distinct from the sort of rockstar who'd fly between two UK cities to appear on telly at a gig promoting environmental awareness, say, or complain about poverty and then get somebody to fly their hat out to another country when they left it behind.
Naming no names.

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