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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Change Amplified: Live Music and the Climate Crisis. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired July 20, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:00]
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: So there's a lot happening in this space, but there's so much motivated trust in those fan bases. The idea is maybe tapping into those folks and leaving a better place behind.
DEAN: It's really smart. It'll be a great one. Thank you so much, Bill Weir. We really appreciate it. We'll be watching.
WEIR: You bet.
DEAN: Still around, "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER" airs next, with Bill Weir about, "CHANGE AMPLIFIED: LIVE MUSIC AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS."
Thank you so much for watching tonight. I'm Jessica Dean. I'm going to see you right back here next weekend. Have a great night.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
In 1969, more than 400,000 people showed up in Woodstock, New York, to listen to three days of live music. Since then, huge multi-day music festivals like Coachella or Lollapalooza have become annual events, attracting hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world. But providing the massive amount of power, food, plastics, clean water and other services to these crowds are having a real environmental impact. Not to mention the carbon footprint of the fans who travel by plane or car to watch their favorite artists perform live.
Over this next hour, CNN's chief climate correspondent and music lover Bill Weir talked to some of the biggest names in the industry, like Billie Eilish, Bonnie Raitt and Jack Johnson, on how they've changed their own performances and how their examples can spread and grow long after the last encore.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WEIR: True story. About 20 or so years ago, I became a new dad and a new guitar player at around the same time, and like all self-taught newbies, those first few songs got played a lot and became the soundtrack of core memories in my family, to the point that now if I want to make my daughter Olivia misty on command, all I have to do is play -- "Flake" by Jack Johnson.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: The first of his many hits.
(MUSIC)
JACK JOHNSON, SINGER, SONGWRITER: You probably don't want the whole song.
WEIR: And I never dreamed of hearing it live on my guitar.
JOHNSON: You can do better than that. You can do it better.
WEIR: He's being nice, I can't. I also never imagined hanging on his Hawaiian farm.
JOHNSON: And so we have, like, citrus island. Got mango island, we got spice island.
WEIR: But all are welcome because Kokua Farm is educational. Built not for a singing surfer to sell stuff, but for kids to learn stuff.
JOHNSON: So this is like, it's like, "Where's Waldo" live action. You get to kind of try to figure out where the queen is.
WEIR: And somewhere between checking the beehive and squishing into the mud to plant an endangered Hawaiian species, I have a music fan epiphany.
JOHNSON: That's cool. That's a little crayfish.
WEIR: The tunes we love come from both person and place, and without this place, without the sun and soil, waves and wonder of Oahu's North Shore, Jack wouldn't be Jack.
JOHNSON: I think growing up here, there's this really slow rhythm that you don't realize you're taking in, which is the sound of waves hitting the shore. And usually that's about 12 seconds, 14 seconds apart.
WEIR: But while plenty of places have an ocean rhythm, Jack was also raised on aloha, the humble respect for nature and neighbor passed down from the very first Hawaiians. Take Kokua Farm, for example, a word that means to help with joy, a word you hear a lot at Little League Baseball games.
JOHNSON: When you'd hit a foul ball, the announcer would always say, hey, kid, you'd be like, how about a little Kokua on the ball? You have to run out in this overgrown field, jump the fence, and everybody would run around looking for it.
WEIR: That's funny.
JOHNSON: And so that's like the, in my heart, the word when I hear Kokua is like, with a lot of joy.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: Right around the time "Flake" started drawing bigger crowds, that Hawaiian sense of responsibility would gnaw at his soul.
JOHNSON: Going back to those early shows, when you used to have these sort of awakenings, you know, it's like everything is great and it's like, wow, what a night.
[20:05:01]
And then you walk out on the stage after everybody is gone and you just see a sea of plastic water bottles, and all of a sudden you're at an amphitheater and you look out back and you realize, whoa, there's multiple trucks here, there's multiple busses. This is a footprint, you know, an environmental footprint that's kind of bigger than I realize. It's all of a sudden it gets here and it's a little wakeup call of, OK, how can we do better? What can we do?
WEIR: It's a question that has haunted concerts and festivals for the last half century. Ever since a few hundred thousand showed up on a New York farm for a little peace, love and music.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.
WEIR: Woodstock proved both the enormous cultural power of live music and the enormous mess it can leave behind.
A couple of generations later, that simple idea of music in a field with friends has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry, with pop-up cities that demand massive amounts of energy and sanitation and fresh water.
(Voice-over): And when fame suddenly plopped Jack's Kokua values into this wasteful world, he sought inspiration from his heroes.
JOHNSON: I just started looking, OK, Willie Nelson is -- he's running all his trucks and busses on biodiesel. Let's do that. Neil Young is putting on the bridge school benefit every year. Let's do something like that in Hawaii.
WEIR: While some of my musical heroes would demand bathtubs of booze or other pleasures in their concert riders, he started asking for composting stations, locally sourced food and plastic-free shows until such demands became known among promoters as the Jack Johnson package.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: And even as songs like "Better Together" hit over a billion streams globally, he stuck with it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you doing some weeding? Can I come help you?
WEIR: Thanks in very large part to her. Kim Johnson. Do you think without her you'd be just another burnout, one-hit
wonder, surfing somewhere?
JOHNSON: Definitely.
WEIR: Playing bars?
JOHNSON: One hundred percent. It's all due to her.
WEIR: That's amazing.
JOHNSON: That's my partnership.
WEIR: But you guys are, you were -- you were college sweethearts like --
JOHNSON: That's right.
KIM JOHNSON, CO-FOUNDER, KOKUA FARM FOUNDATION: Yes. We met when we're 18. First week of school.
JOHNSON: Yes.
K. JOHNSON: So yes.
WEIR: And that time he was just a surfer with a guitar probably, right?
K. JOHNSON: Exactly. Yes.
WEIR: But at what point did you realize --
JOHNSON: I was trying to think of a way to broaden that and make it better, but no, that was pretty much it.
(LAUGHTER)
K. JOHNSON: Yes. Surfer with the guitar. I think when you're lucky enough to draw a crowd, my mind was like, what are we going to do with this ability to draw people together? And you feel a sense of purpose that you want to make it bigger than yourself.
WEIR: Like some people do.
K. JOHNSON: Yes.
WEIR: A lot of other people think cha-ching.
K. JOHNSON: I didn't want it to all go to his head. So I was like, we got to do something for, you know, the benefit of society. And also, I think you're touring every night, you know, at the end of the night, you look out at this like sea of plastic cups on the ground, and you kind of realize that the negative impact of what you're doing. So my mind went to what can we do to make it a positive impact? So everything we've been doing over the years has been with that lens of how can we make a positive impact. WEIR: I wonder how much of that is -- comes from being Hawaiian, where
it is built into the social fabric. You throw the party, you clean up the mess, or everybody helps clean up the mess.
K. JOHNSON: Or just the concept that, you know, the world is a canoe. When you live on an island, you realize there is no way because it's like on the other side of the mountain there. OK, you know, we can't just keep filling up that landfill.
WEIR: Right.
K. JOHNSON: Or, you know, there's like definitely finite space here. And we feel that so much more than, you know, on the continent.
WEIR (voice-over): But cleaning up the obvious mess is just one part of the problem. Since Woodstock, humanity has released a trillion tons of planet cooking pollution, entire ecosystems are being wrecked by unregulated greed, and outdoor festivals are becoming more dangerous as weather becomes more violent.
Can a few superstar musicians who shared Jack Johnson's call for Kokua actually do something about it? Can meaningful change ever start at a show?
Well, there is new science and new thinking on this. And coming up, we'll explore how the power of Billie Eilish and the bugs on Kokua Farm are all connected.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:11:50]
WEIR: It's a Sunday night in Atlanta and another arena is packed by the presence of a most unlikely superstar, Billie Eilish.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: A decade ago, she was just a 13-year-old making music with her brother in her room.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: But after Billie and Finneas uploaded "Ocean Eyes" to Soundcloud for all the world to hear, they were launched into the stratosphere of stadium tours, soundtracks, Grammy wins and Oscar shows. Even a spot in the closing ceremonies of the last Olympics.
It's the kind of sudden success that can change a person's values, but Billie Eilish immediately set out to bend the industry around her values. Haters and big oil companies be damn.
BILLIE EILISH, SINGER, SONGWRITER: Yes, it was funny that that video really went kind of viral in the kind of, oh, my god, she's Satanic world, which was really funny to me because I was like, no, no, you guys, this is a metaphor for climate change. I'm a bird falling into a thing of oil. Like, that's kind of the whole point. I have been trying to change the way that the industry has been
running for a really long time. So for like food backstage, all of my catering is vegan. Yes. We have like refillable water stations. We don't sell like plastic water bottles. And I have like a no idling policy for all the trucks, you know, to save all those -- all those fossil fuels.
WEIR: Yes. And save your lungs.
EILISH: Save your lungs.
WEIR: And all of your fans.
EILISH: And save all the things. Yes. But, yes, it's really amazing.
WEIR: So it's leading by example, sort of.
(Voice-over): As someone who attended the first Lollapaloozas and Coachellas and Bonnaroos, I can testify that the influence of Billie and others like her is catching on.
You can now get a concert T-shirt in exchange for filling a plastic bag with recyclables. I talked to one guy, said it took him 45 minutes because the place is too clean. We've reached a point where it is cool to refill your own water bottle.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The refillable water keeps you hydrated.
WEIR: We didn't plan that at all. I have never met her.
EILISH: You know that most of this show is being powered by solar right now. That's pretty (EXPLETIVE DELETED) cool.
WEIR (voice-over): And at her urging Lollapalooza switched its main stage to battery power in 2023, with a hybrid system that gets cleaner every year.
[20:15:09]
JAKE PERRY, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS AND SUSTAINABILITY, C3 PRESENTS: Those generators normally would be running 24 hours a day for eight days. They're probably running about two to three hours max a day, so we're cutting, you know, somewhere around 80 percent of the run time in emissions on that.
WEIR: So the following year, when Chappell Roan blew up, most of this record crowd had no idea they were dancing along to a clean energy revolution.
EILISH: Clearly, it's possible. We really, really need to do a better job of protecting this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) planet, you guys. Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
Lollapalooza, I did first fully battery powered show, which is amazing and --
WEIR: It is amazing.
EILISH: And it just proves that, like, you can do that.
WEIR: Right.
EILISH: It's not impossible. I think we have this idea that's like, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. And that's just not how it works. But it is. It can be.
WEIR: And here's the thing. We live in a culture where our celebrities are so powerful that coming up with something new at a festival will trickle into communities instead of the other way around. You know what I mean?
EILISH: Right.
WEIR: You can be a pioneer in this space.
EILISH: Right. I know.
MAGGIE BAIRD, CLIMATE ACTIVIST, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SUPPORT+FEED: Days.
WEIR: Right.
BAIRD: You sign up.
WEIR (voice-over): But Billie is careful to give all the credit to a force of nature named Maggie Baird. Actor, improv coach, environmentalist, and Billie's mom.
BAIRD: I know you don't remember, but you came here as a little kid.
EILISH: Did I?
BAIRD: Yes.
EILISH: What did we do here?
BAIRD: We just walked around, took a field trip and explored. Heard all the mission.
WEIR: Were you dragging the kids out into nature growing up?
BAIRD: Yes. Dragging them out.
WEIR (voice-over): We first met in the hills above Los Angeles, at TreePeople, a nonprofit that plants shade in underserved neighborhoods and after wildfires.
BAIRD: I remember the years where, you know, people thought you were crazy to eat the way I ate or to carry your own grocery bags. You know, all the basic things that now are more accepting.
EILISH: I mean, I still, people give me so much (EXPLETIVE DELETED) for not having paper towels in my house. I've never had paper towels. You know, I just, I just, you just get a cloth wet and you're good.
WEIR: I heard you were the kid at the birthday party who would carefully unwrap so you could reuse the tape and wrap it.
EILISH: Yes. I was raised to feel this way, but I also, I think I have my mom's gene of really caring about, you know, the world and animals and not wasting things.
BAIRD: Well, I think it was like a big shock, right? Because we had this small little life. Right? And all our Christmas presents were wrapped in these beautiful bags that I sewed, and we used the same ones every year. And we had, you know, our plant based food. And it was hanging up our laundry, like just our life. And then we stepped into this other world, and it was a little bit like, yes, oh, my gosh, what is happening here?
Packages and boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes with, you know, mylar wrapping. You know, you just become kind of horrified to go from this kind of extreme, all while, you know, the climate crisis is worsening and environmental devastation and loss of biodiversity. And so that was the big, big awakening.
EILISH: We were like meeting different brands. And I was, you know, going to go on tour and make my own, you know, perfume and my own clothing line. We learned how much like unbelievable waste is going on. I mean, you would not believe how wasteful this industry is. And it's like you ask them what their plan is to be a little more eco conscious, and it's like nobody has a plan.
BAIRD: I always say nobody had a plan. Had.
EILISH: But they then started making plans because we would yell at them.
WEIR: You demanded a plan.
EILISH: We would demand a plan. Yes.
WEIR: How did that go early on?
BAIRD: Well, I mean, early on we would just say like, oh, we're going to have this meeting. Oh, can you show us what the sustainable plan is?
EILISH: Well, we would really like corner them, like, so what's your plan?
BAIRD: Sometimes companies had to -- we found out later they literally created a plan for our meeting, presented it as if it was their company policy, but it was great. Then they did it.
EILISH: The amount of change that has happened, though, because we've actually really said something, has been really amazing to see, and it's really nice to see that, like, you can actually get people to change their ways and their policies. I mean, like I had Oscar de la Renta stop having any kind of fur products because I was like, I'm not going to wear your stuff if you sell that or make that.
WEIR: And they were willing to make that change.
EILISH: And they were willing to make that change.
WEIR: Because they wanted you --
EILISH: Yes. And that's --
WEIR: That's powerful.
EILISH: And they made that change. You know, that's like, that's their entire history of their brand. That's just some real commitment. And I really appreciated that. Things like that are what keep us, keep us doing it.
WEIR: I read this amazing quote when I started this project, that it is the artist's job to make the revolution irresistible, and the revolution you're both fighting for involves new kinds of clean energy, less waste, less plastic. But how do you convince a live music crowd that those things are cool?
[20:20:04]
EILISH: I think I just, I mean it, and I feel like my belief in caring about the world and like, making changes in your own life. I just believe in it and I'm -- it's genuine for me. I'm not being paid to --
BAIRD: Bring your water bottle.
WEIR: By the big nature lobby.
EILISH: Yes, like I'm not -- yes, I'm like, I'm not, don't worry. This isn't a -- I'm not like, getting much out of advocating for the --
BAIRD: Talk to Mother Nature's agent. See if she can.
EILISH: Yes. Like if anything, it's got to happen. Yes. It takes a little bit more thought and a little bit more time maybe, but it's like, if that's all it takes, then why isn't there more of that?
(MUSIC)
WEIR (voice-over): But that sentiment is as old as American music. And just like a great song, a great movement is built on the chops and genius of those who came before.
When we come back, how the OG's green touring set up the current movement, and how it has grown into a whole new way to turn anxiety into meaningful action.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:26:06]
WEIR: If you've attended a big show in the last 20 years, like Lollapalooza in Chicago or any of the Billie Eilish stops on her recent tour, you might have noticed the work of Reverb.
EILISH: We have this company called Reverb that comes out with us and helps us and makes sure that everything is thrown away properly. So we have like compost and we have recycling and upcycling and all that stuff.
WEIR: And that never would have happened without Guster, a three-man band formed in a Tufts University dorm room in the early '90s.
ADAM GARDNER, SINGER, GUITARIST, GUSTER, CO-FOUNDER, REVERB: We started just as what you could bring to college, acoustic guitars. Brian played hand drums. And that was it. Two harmonies. And, you know, I think somebody in the "Boston Globe" called us the Indigo Boys.
(LAUGHTER)
GARDNER: And we're like, hey, I'll take it. Yes, I mean, absolutely.
WEIR: And a week after meeting his band, he met an environmentalist named Laura.
Was it love at first sight or?
LAUREN SULLIVAN, ENVIRONMENTALIST, CO-FOUNDER, REVERB: It actually kind of was. His a cappella group, the Beelzebubs, was singing at our dorm orientation, and I said, oh, that guy singing, "Love the One You're With." Or maybe it was Melissa, I can't remember. I was like, he's cute.
WEIR (voice-over): And as Guster rose from New England bars to national tours, they had those same moments of reckoning.
GARDNER: When you live with an environmentalist, you live as an environmentalist if you want to stay in their good graces. And so -- and so we did. And then I'd go out on the road and really feel that dichotomy. You just see a sea of plastic on the floor, the generators on the bus never shut off. Just everything felt so wasteful.
WEIR: And he wasn't alone. Guster was touring with Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, Maroon Five and the Barenaked Ladies at the time.
GARDNER: All those bands felt the same way.
I came home one too many times and complained to Lauren about like, what a mess it is out on the road. And she's like, why are you just sitting around in a circle complaining to each other about it? Do something about it.
SULLIVAN: We had spoken about this concept and his desire to make his tours more sustainable, and my desire to give voice to environmental organizations. And his sister sent us a pamphlet she had picked up at a Bonnie Raitt show that talked about her environmental efforts and activism and biodiesel on her busses and all these things. And it was like, my god, it's happening. Somebody out there is doing this thing that we've been dancing around. (MUSIC)
WEIR: Enter the woman who has been blending blues, folk, country and rock since the Nixon administration, winning 13 Grammys and cementing a spot on the Mount Rushmore of musicians trying to make a difference. When we met under the stage at Kansas City's Midland Theater before her show, she explained it all started by being raised around nature by Quakers who worked in entertainment.
BONNIE RAITT, SINGER, SONGWRITER: Well, my folks really appreciated the tenets of Quakerism. They were very moved by pacifism and by tolerance and equality and all the things that Jesus really was talking about. And so they were very involved with the nuclear freeze, trying to ban the bomb, and the Civil Rights Movement was really important to them. So early on, I knew my parents were working hard to try to make a difference, and they were in the entertainment business, but they used their voice and I learned from their example.
WEIR: In the early '70s, Bonnie was among those artists crying out against oil spills, clear cut forests and environmental injustice.
RAITT: Where they're putting the dumps and where they're putting the mining people of color, people of less means to fight them locally, you know. So we were trying to just educate it. And it started for me when I did the Lilith Fair and Sarah McLaughlin had all these great booths promoting, you know, organic hemp clothing and organic food and alternative juices. And they traveled in the trucks with the tour.
[20:30:05]
They would set them up just like they set up the stages. And so when I had a little bit more clout and was playing these big festivals, we decided to start something called Green Highway. And we had safe energy and we brought a hybrid car to show people, just offering information from the grassroots, local groups that we invited to participate.
WEIR: And that was a key unlock for Adam and Lauren, connecting fans of the same music with local nonprofits. So when they leave the show, actual earth repair can begin.
GARDNER: I consider her the godmother of like modern music environmentalism, where I think prior to what she did in 2002 on the Green Highway, mostly what that meant was raising money and having a foundation, doing a concert and having the proceeds go to a worthy cause.
(MUSIC)
GARDNER: But not actually taking sustainability on yourself as a business and as a touring artist.
WEIR: So you must have studied Sting and the Rainforest or Live Aid or these crises around the world. How do you figure out where the line is and how much your fans want to hear about this stuff, and how much they just want to have a good time, and where you risk a backlash if you -- if you don't do it the right way?
GARDNER: I think we've known from the beginning that there are a few key pieces. We cannot be a buzzkill. This has to enhance the concert experience. It can't make it worse or be a distraction.
SULLIVAN: And our ethos has always been you don't have to do something 100 percent. We're not purists. We understand there's the gray, that we're all kind of hypocrites, and we all have an impact by being on this planet. We understand that. We just want everybody to get on this path to sustainability in tiny little ways, whatever we can do. And then increase and get better and do better for the environment and for each other, honestly.
And so it's bringing those fans in the fold and meeting them where they're at, and then magnifying what we do from there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One, two, three. Reverb!
GARDNER: So there's two things that Reverb does. Like we want to lessen the negative impacts of music, live music, touring and elsewhere, recording, every aspect of music. But we also want to increase the positive potential that music has as a cultural force, as a fundraising force, as an action gathering force. And so that's really what we do, because music as an industry isn't one of the largest polluters relative to other industries, yet it is one of the largest forces because of that incredible relationship an artist has with their fans. It's really unlike any other public figure.
WEIR (voice-over): So when perhaps the most beloved man in country music decides to run a festival in Luck, Texas, on sunlight and batteries, it kicks open a big old door.
GARDNER: That was, at the time, the largest festival powered by solar and batteries. I've told Maggie Baird about this. Hey, look what we just did outside South by Southwest at Willie's ranch for this big festival. Four stages, all solar battery powered. She said, great. What's next? I was like, well, Billie's headlining Lollapalooza. What do you think? She's like, let's do it, which was like, you know, way bigger. It was the main stage at Lollapalooza and it was scary for everyone. Let's be honest. Major kudos to Billie's production team for being like, let's do it, because it's a big risk.
WEIR: That's the worst nightmare, right? If the power goes out mid- set.
GARDNER: Yes.
SULLIVAN: We were watching very closely.
GARDNER: We've had over 190 artists sets powered by batteries, hip- hop's first festival. We did a festival in the heart of coal country called Healing Appalachia with Tyler Childers, who's a partner of ours, who we're on tour with right now, all 100 percent battery powered. We reduced emissions by 99 percent.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:38:34]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amazing. Thank you. Have a great rest of your day.
WEIR: A founding father of festival life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you for being a huge part of this.
WEIR: Soaks up some love.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just wanted to say I'm a huge fan. I was at your set back when you guys were before the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Like, way, way back with my dad.
WEIR: With hits like "Been Caught Stealing," Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction helped create a whole new category called alternative rock, which I learned can get you thrown out of some religious schools if played often enough.
I want to thank you all these years later.
PERRY FARRELL, SINGER, SONGWRITER, FOUNDER, LOLLAPALOOZA: Did you get into a better school?
WEIR: I got a much better school.
(Voice-over): Jane's Addiction broke up in '91. And for the farewell tour, Perry wanted a festival that would mix genres and their fans.
FARRELL: Thank you for putting this on. You're very welcome.
WEIR: He's royalty.
(Voice-over): He called it Lollapalooza.
FARRELL: No, it was all about incredible, groundbreaking music.
WEIR: Right.
FARRELL: And bringing people together so that they can almost leave their body, raise their consciousness. I was just reminded of the very first incarnation of the charity was a place that I called the Mind Field.
WEIR: Yes.
FARRELL: But we hadn't had computers or cell phones yet.
[20:40:03]
So if you wanted to find out and be an activist, find out more about the world and what's right with it, what's wrong with it, you had to come out to a festival, a festival, get together, get into these, you know, deeper discussions about the world.
WEIR (voice-over): After a trip to the Amazon, he is sharing his megaphone here with ReWild, a nonprofit devoted to protecting the most vital ecosystems.
ROBIN D. MOORE, VP OF COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING, REWILD: Nature is the fabric of life. Nature is everything. And in order to address our biggest challenges of today we have to protect and restore nature.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's so cool.
FARRELL: Look how beautiful it is. You may go around replanting.
We've got such a loud megaphone, every day 100,000 people, be close to, you know, half a million people will get the message.
WEIR: But sometimes rock 'n' roll can derail the message and the messenger.
After tussling with guitarist Dave Navarro mid-show last year, Jane's Addiction canceled the remainder of their reunion tour and seemed to have broken up for good.
I'm among the many fans hoping Perry Farrell finds health and peace. But in the meantime, the founding spirit of Lollapalooza is now in the corporate hands of Live Nation and C3.
PERRY: We have the goal of cutting emissions. We want to cut it 50 percent globally across Live Nation by the year 2030. We need bold solutions like this. Otherwise we're not going to get there. And great partners that aren't afraid to go through this new journey.
WEIR: And when you ask anyone in the industry to name the most fearless role models, you hear Coldplay. Every time.
(MUSIC)
WEIR: In fact, when they announced the Music of the Spheres Tour a couple of years ago, Chris Martin vowed that if they couldn't cut their carbon footprint by 50 percent, they would stop touring for good. And then they experimented with kinetic dance floors that turn the crowd energy into electricity, a first of its kind BMW battery system to power shows from the cleanest local sources and sustainable biofuels made from used cooking oil. And so far, they announced they cut almost 60 percent. So the band plays on.
This is one of the Toronto stops on the Music of the Spheres Tour. The kinetic dance floors are down there. The power of bikes. What you can't see is how much data Coldplay provides to a first of its kind study out of MIT.
JOHN E. FERNANDEZ, PROFESSOR, DIRECTOR, MIT ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS INITIATIVE: So I'm, you know, a professor, I'm a researcher. I've been doing sustainability work, and I never thought that I would be going to music festivals as part of my research and realizing that the power issues at a music festival are analogous to the power issues that we face in larger systems and cities.
WEIR: Across 2023 the MIT team measured everything from trucking and power to food and beverage. Hundreds of venues, and found that live music has a relatively light footprint compared to many industries. About the same annual pollution as three million cars.
In the U.K., that's 1 percent of their total planet cooking emissions. In the U.S., it is 0.2 percent, but the biggest part of that footprint by far comes from fan travel and how the artist decides to tour really matters.
For example, Taylor Swift's team says she offsets all of her private jet travel. But when she decided to play six shows of the Eras Tour in Singapore, instead of six stops around the region, research found the impact of fan travel skyrocketed.
FERNANDEZ: Let's say you picked six population centers, six cities in Southeast Asia, her emissions would go up and her equipment emissions would go up, but audience emissions would go down.
GARDNER: That's hard because especially in this country some of the greatest venues people come to like Red Rocks. It's an amazing venue.
WEIR: Exactly.
GARDNER: People want to come from all over.
WEIR: It's part of the experience is the destination.
GARDNER: Yes. So there's a lot of challenges there. So it is hard and there are hard decisions to be made about that. And I've got some ideas but they're not very popular yet.
WEIR: Can you share them?
GARDNER: Well, I think the concept of geo access and preference is something that we're going to have to look at.
WEIR: What does that mean?
GARDNER: Giving preference to people who are within a certain mile radius of the venue first.
WEIR: Interesting.
GARDNER: That's never been said out loud before.
(LAUGHTER)
[20:45:02]
GARDNER: But I think that should happen.
WEIR: OK.
GARDNER: I'm not saying you can't come, but we're going to give preference so we can at least know that a certain percentage of people in the venue are coming from local or at least regional.
WEIR: Right. (Voice-over): The British trip hop group Massive Attack was not afraid
to speak out and publicly turned down this year's popular Coachella Festival. It's in Palm Springs, Robert del Naja said. It's a golf resort built on a desert run on a sprinkler system using public water supplies.
Mental. If you want to see something that's the most ludicrous bit of human behavior, it's right there.
Not long after, Coachella announced a BYO bottle program and their first zero carbon stage.
I think it was last year, Massive Attack called out Coachella, right? But I've since heard that maybe Coachella heard that and is trying to up their game, right?
FERNANDEZ: That's exactly right. And those hard questions can't wait. We need to ask about the viability of those kinds of venues because the hard questions then lead to some, you know, breakthrough commitments and hopefully much faster than they have in the past.
WEIR (voice-over): And the industry is being forced to adapt to wilder weather and higher insurance rates. This year's Bonnaroo three or four days canceled by flooding in the same Tennessee field where they've always partied through the rain. But the climate is different now. Both the natural one breaking before our eyes and the political one.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Frac, frac, frac. And drill, drill, drill. Drill, baby, drill.
WEIR: Driven by those who seem to despise everything these folks stand for. So where's the hope? And what do they do next?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:51:14]
(MUSIC)
JOHNSON: (Singing) Healthy soil makes healthy plants, and healthy plants make healthy food. Healthy food makes healthy people and healthy people have good attitudes. It's time to get back down underground to the microorganism town. We got old dead leaves and sticks from trees and bugs all around, a lot of decomposing going down.
WEIR (voice-over): Jack Johnson wrote this love song to composting on his way to play for a group of third graders.
JOHNSON: (Singing) Because compost, that's the way to get the most nutrients back in the soil. Because compost, that's the way to get the most nutrients back in the soil. So compost.
(LAUGHTER)
WEIR: And then as they do monthly, the volunteers who built Kokua Farm show up to work.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friendship.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Community.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wrestling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Permaculture.
K. JOHNSON: Hey, welcome into our Aina Farm Stands.
WEIR: And after six hard years, the fruits of their labor now fill the farmstand.
K. JOHNSON: All profits go back into the farm and all of our programs that we do.
WEIR: And the store where a circular economy brings neighbors for the locally made soaps and detergents.
JOHNSON: This is when you're ready to take the next level. You can get rid of your toothpaste tubes.
WEIR: Vintage aloha shirts and records.
K. JOHNSON: Reusable water bottles, reusable utensil sets, reusable bags and grocery bags and produce bags and lunch boxes.
WEIR: In a place like this, it's easy to forget that back on the mainland.
TRUMP: She wants to ban fracking.
WEIR: Donald Trump has declared war on climate science.
TRUMP: Frac, frac, frac, and drill, drill, drill. Drill, baby, drill.
WEIR: Renewable energy and pollution regulation. While hundreds of corporations backslide on green promises.
I was going to ask because your music has a certain healing vibe to it. Do you ever get really depressed? Do you look at the state of the world and the state of the climate fight and get as dark as I do some days? And how do you get through that?
JOHNSON: Yes, there's like 3:00, 4:00 in the morning kind of feelings. And sometimes I'll wake up and write the more depressing songs. They end up on the back half of the record. Those are like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning songs. And then there's like, morning lights out and it's a new day and you're thinking about, yes, we can do this, you know?
I have some kind of a weird built in optimism. I don't know what it is because I'm not, I'm not denying what I read or what I see. You know, in my mind, it's like I know it's there, but somehow I just want to keep working towards making it better. There's a Joseph Campbell thing I love about joyful participation, and
he explains it really well of just about like, there's times you want to give up, and the only way is to participate joyfully. It's like you got to wake up every morning and decide, am I going to participate or not? You know, if you're going to participate, you got to do it joyfully. And that's, I don't know, that's where I'm at.
WEIR: It's joy -- it's an act of rebellion.
JOHNSON: Yes. No, it's true. 90 percent of our food is shipped in. So you're fighting against the system when you're growing food in Hawaii and trying to, you know, have it available for the local community.
WEIR: Right.
JOHNSON: That's a rebellious act in its own.
WEIR: When you look at the politics, when you look at the science, and as much as you care about this, it doesn't seem to be sweeping the nation the way it should.
K. JOHNSON: Right.
WEIR: What keeps you hopeful and -- that?
K. JOHNSON: All the kids. To me, like being a teacher, I mean, that's like always what has brought me hope is to know that there is that next generation coming up, and they're going to improve upon what we're doing.
[20:55:08]
It's going to get better. I see their hope and they're like that spark in their eye. And that's like, yes.
WEIR (voice-over): And she says they hope that the folks who come to Jack's shows find or build their own version of a Kokua Farm in their own community, even if that happens to be in a big city.
Finding your tribe at a show can turn into a force for good. Just ask Adam Met, bass player and singer for the New York Band of Brothers known as AJR.
ADAM MET, CLIMATE ACTIVIST, BASSIST, AJR: We actually grew up a couple blocks from here. We grew up just down in Chelsea, and we started out with street performing in the streets in Washington Square Park, and we grew up listening to folk music of the '50s and '60s that our dad played for us.
WEIR: But he also fell in love with climate science, human rights and sustainable development. Got a PhD, and when he isn't making music, teaches climate policy at Columbia.
MET: So music, it's all about how do you reach people, how do you talk to them from an emotional perspective, but really at its core, it's how do you move people? And honestly, the climate movement needs the same thing. We haven't moved enough people. We haven't reached them in the way that they need to be reached. We found that so many small organizations just focused on awareness or just focus on raising money, and we're past that point. We need to get as many people engaged as possible.
Join a jail, and take climate action for your community right now.
So we did this on our last arena tour last summer, and we had 15 percent of the people who walked through the door of the venue actually take action. And I'm not talking about pledging to do anything or changing the kind of straw that you're using. I'm talking about on site we had people phone banking, calling their representatives about local issues. We had them signing petitions.
We had them registering to vote, volunteering for local organizations. 70 percent of the people who took action on site actually followed up and went to a second location after the show to volunteer.
WEIR: Wow.
MET: To sit in at community boards, to do beach cleanups, to do actually physically tangible things.
WEIR: Right.
(MUSIC)
EILISH: I feel like my generation is like very coddled. I feel like, I feel like everyone has been babied in my generation for their whole childhoods and youth. And I think there's not a lot of confidence in like doing things like voting. And I think voting is a really scary thing for us. And I think it's like so many choices and I don't know all the choices. So I might as well just not do anything. And what if, you know, my vote doesn't matter? I think that that, like I have that voice in my head, that's like, it doesn't matter. Why would you even vote? Like, who even cares?
The most important thing we can all do is vote for candidates who are committed to protecting our planet.
And I want to advocate that it does matter. And if I can, you know, change someone's mind at all, I really want to do that.
WEIR: I was thinking about your early career. When you put your first albums out, it was Richard Nixon who was in power, right?
RAITT: Yes.
WEIR: And now people wouldn't believe that looking at you. But now you were in the second coming of Donald Trump.
RAITT: Yes.
WEIR: How do you reconcile what is happening to this country and the messages that you have put forward your whole career, how they might be going over these days? RAITT: Well, you know, half the country didn't vote for him, you know,
at least. So it's a question of believing that there are people that still feel that taking care of the earth and lessening our damage to it, and being more responsible and conscious and the choices we make and the products that we buy, don't take more than you need, you know? I mean, I'm all for entrepreneurship. It's just, you know, unregulated greed is ridiculous. That's not what the American dream is about.
If we can be of service with our voices and were responsible, I think it's a beautiful thing that can happen to inspire people to get active and get out in the street. That's what we did in the '70s against the war. It's what the Civil Rights Movement did. All you have to do is just sit in a Jackson Browne concert or a Mavis Staples concert, and you're just transformed by the end of the night, you want to just get up and do something.
WEIR: And that legacy can now include you. Just look around at your next show. You might just find an earth loving tribe that not only does some good, but also knows every word to your favorite song.
