How Music Fans Can Save The Planet - Tori Tsui on Billie Eilish, Brian Eno & Fossil Fuel Treaty

0:00Can music save the planet? I realise that's quite a grand, big opening question, but I think there's a very good chance it can. In fact, a study from Glasgow University found that 82 % of music fans want to prevent climate breakdown. That's 10 % more than the general population. I don't really know what that says about people that are not necessarily self-defined as music fans and why they don't want to save the planet, but that's a question that we're not going to answer in this episode. of that 82 % only 3 % really knew what they could do as music fans to stop everything going wrong and life on earth ending and that is quite a shocking stat that there's all these different initiatives in the industry there's some really amazing projects there's things like Overheated that Billie Eilish runs which is climate conference and all the things that she does at her shows there is Earth % which Brian Eno does where artists put a percent of their money into climate initiatives.

0:54Various different companies, projects, charities, organisations that I've met over the years have been doing amazing things. And one of the driving forces behind the amazing things they're doing is the climate activist Tori Choi. She wrote, It's Not Just You. And in this podcast, I got to sit down with her, pick her expert brain to talk about what we can do as music fans, what we can do as humans really and some of the complexities of complicities of the music industry some of the things that she's done with the artists and activists that she works with and well i'll let her introduce herself this is tori on stage before massive attack performed to the co-op arena in manchester Good evening Manchester, how are you?

1:45My name is Clory Choi and I am a climate justice activist and it is such a privilege to be here with you all tonight.

1:57Today is World Environment Day and massive attack have endorsed the call for a fossil fuel treaty, a global framework to phase out from coal, oil and gas.

2:15Fossil fuels are weapons of mass destruction, fueling climate breakdown, and also the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Right now, my friend and fellow comrade Greco Thunberg, is sailing to break the siege in Gaza alongside 11 other activists. It is so important that we show our support to ensure their safety.

2:54But the fossil fuel industry does not act in isolation. It is being bankrolled by big financial corporations. Recently the Co-op Lodif Arena announced a partnership with Barclay, which is one of the leading perpetrators of the climate crisis. Barclay is providing financial investment to the fossil fuel industry and the arms trade which is slaughtering innocent Palestinians. It is time that we took a stand against these profiteering industries. It is time that we fight to protect what we learn. Our planet, our people and our homes depend on it.

3:46The fossil fuel treaty provides a pathway forward And so I'm asking each and every single one of you to join us in this fight. Every captain who has a voice and a conscience. We demand an end to big profiteering industries. We demand an end to the banks that fund them. We demand an end to the genociding gossip. We demand an end to the genociding gossip. It's time to free Palestine. Free, free. Free to free. Free to free. Thank you Manchester and enjoy the show. This conversation that you're about to hear takes place backstage at Earth Sonic Live in Manchester. It was a reasonably calm, thoughtful conversation.

4:44If you subscribe to the Drowning Sound YouTube channel, you will be able to find many more videos. from my trip to Manchester where I watched people sampling frogs and having a music lesson in how to make music with frog sounds. I saw artists performing underneath the skeletons of whales. I watched an installation with beautiful scenery and lush music with the lights turned out at night in the museum which was great and the evening was topped off by a DJ set from Groove Armada. So that's Earthsonic, but this is my conversation with Tori Choi, which took place at Manchester Museum, which is a natural history museum in Manchester.

5:25Over to me introducing Tori again.

5:40Hello Tori, welcome to the Drowning Sound podcast. We are in Manchester today, backstage at Earthsonic Live. The last time you were here, you stood on a very big stage in front of a large crowd of Massive Attack fans, having just got Andy Burnham to sign the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty. I have to pause saying that because there's a lot of words to get out. What is that and how did that all come about? Thank you for having me on the podcast, Sean. And yeah, that moment in Manchester was quite an iconic one that happened earlier this year, in June actually as part of their performance that they were doing at the Co-op Live which is apparently the most sustainable arena in the UK.

6:21Co-op are the good guys aren't they? Yeah well you say that but not to digress but they were being sponsored by Barclays which I did call out on stage. But yeah you mentioned the fossil fuel treaty they're essentially a global framework to phase out from coal, oil and gas. And they're a complementary agreement to the Paris Agreement, which was trying to keep the world within 1.5 degrees of warming, which as we know, unfortunately, we have exceeded that. And I say we with this kind of, I don't know, I lament slightly because we implies that it's a collective thing, which by all means it is, but actually there are people who are most responsible for us going over 1.5 degrees, and there are industries most responsible specifically the fossil fuel industry and fossil fuels coal oil and gas account for 86 percent of all carbon emissions over the past 10 years and the fossil fuel treaty is essentially trying to get the world to phase out from these addictive materials the thing that's really frustrating with something like paris is that it doesn't actually mention coal oil and gas despite them being the leading cause of the climate crisis and as we've seen with the UNFCCC COP30 in Belém, the sort of biggest climate conference each year, there isn't really much of this emphasis on actually phasing out from fossil fuels that they're taking seriously.

7:51Firstly because we keep seeing them host COPs and petro states. Secondly because the biggest delegation is always made up of people from the fossil fuel industry and thirdly every single time fossil fuel phase out gets kind of mentioned to be implemented in the agreement it's just shut down and that's unsurprising because there are so many lobbyists in the room so what does it mean for like andy burnham what's he committed to doing is he just committed to like not having a coal power station in manchester well i mean if he did open a coal power station we'd be having some words with him but to have a city like manchester which i think actually has legs to stand on in terms of their commitments to sustainability specifically if you look around their sort of like um commitments to sustainable transport which i think is very impressive they're even called the b network yeah yeah it's very green um and you know to have someone like um mayor andy burnham endorse us it just goes to show that cities can lead the way to a greener future and and also folks like massive attack who really stand committed to um lowering their carbon footprint, what would their sort of Act 1.5 initiative and the way that they power their concerts on renewable energy and just generally stand on the right side of history in terms of political views.

9:09It was really impactful for us. And, you know, I think endorsements are an interesting thing when it comes to, I guess, something like the treaty, because while, you know, we might not think they have material change embedded into the action itself i do think that having people with large profiles and political power can actually shift the dialogue and get our national governments to act in a way in accordance with something like the fossil fuel treaty and it's currently endorsed by 18 nation states so 18 countries around the world and that endorsement actually does translate into change because this year is the first year that they're trying to implement um you know policy changes within their legislation to move away from fossil fuels which is really exciting and at the COP the fossil fuel treaty announced they would be hosting the first ever fossil fuel phase out conference in Colombia next April.

10:09Should that be a festival you got to get another F in there. Oh my gosh for sure. Get a massive attack on the bill. Well might have to. Yeah so in terms of the music industry like you straddle the climate world which we all straddle the climate world sure and the music industry and i looked and i couldn't see if lots of music companies had signed the treaty like obviously vinyl is made with petrochemicals yeah and we've been looking into within place of war the emissions and the energy use of streaming platforms yeah and how things like tracks have gone from being i'm going to glance at ellie who's been doing the research but about 20 megs a song to about 180 megs a song so the amount of energy you use every time you stream a song it's more and most people aren't really thinking about it obviously individually we can't make that much difference but if apple spotify all of the other platforms thought about the energy use they could say well this is the low and it's like your headphones aren't that good you don't need to be listening to it this quality sure um so i guess the the thing that i'm curious about is like the music industry is obviously a huge industry yeah ships things all around the world like hasn't really introduced the new formats of vinyl like yeah i know there's like the k-pop for planet planet movement and they're really great at like getting k-pop artists to kind of change how they operate i guess like what sort of things have you seen and maybe are all the big record companies and streaming services signed up?

11:41Well, the first comment that you kind of made was about industries like the music industry endorsing something like the treaty. And they can, technically. I just don't know if many people and many big record labels, touring companies, what have you, know that this is an actual action that they can do. And I think it's because, in part, you know, the name and the word fossil fuel treaty feels quite like an entirely different world that only climate people are part of. But that's not true. We're in a natural history museum right now. It feels quite removed from the music industry. And I think we have a job at the treaty to kind of break down those barriers.

12:24But also I think maybe there's a fear of like, oh, if we're committing to this, we'll never use fossil fuels. But that's not what we're saying. I guess what we're saying is that we live in this world that is very reliant on fossil fuels and you can be part of this transition so we call it a just transition meaning that no one gets left behind it doesn't mean that we turn off the taps and everything ends overnight that's just not physically possible so you know I would love to see more people in the music industry more big record labels touring agencies what have you endorse the treaty in terms of developments I'm seeing within the music industry There's so many people working at the intersection of green energy and touring.

13:03Touring is very carbon intensive, whether that be through actually putting on the show or getting an artist from A to B. And it's not just the artists, it's their teams. Yeah, the audience as well, their teams, the band members, the equipment that they're shipping out. There's so many different things to factor in. And I think that a lot of the time it feels like too much of a minefield to even begin to think about how to navigate doing a tour sustainably that people just don't even try at all. But I have seen some really awesome work being done in that sector. My friend Pauline Bourdon runs a consultancy business called Solophilia and her specialty is all about green touring.

13:46and she's actually someone who wants to say to artists, you're also worried about this being more expensive. It can actually cut costs because you're saving money that would otherwise be spent on fuel. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. Just because something's seen as more sustainable, doesn't it inherently mean that it's going to cost you more? So the work that she does in that is really cool. And also people who are doing research in audience opinions on climate, I think that's really important to shout about because I think it's like something like over 70 % of audience members or people who consume music actually want artists to take action on the climate.

14:26And I think Music Declares Emergency did a survey and said 82 % of fans care about the planet. Yeah. Preserving life on Earth. That's huge. But only 3 % know what to do. And I think that's the big gap. And that's where artists can come in. And that's why the work you're doing with Earth Percent and different organisations to give artists the kind of vocabulary. What's some of the things like you've worked with Billie Eilish and you're in the overheated documentary she made and you do climate conferences with Billie. What is it that you think other artists could learn from her approach? well I think it does need to be said that someone of Billie's um size and her fandom and and the resources that she has means that she can technically afford to do more than say mid small size artists um and because of the impact that she has it is worth investing in that as well so I just want to caveat that but there are so many artists of her caliber and size who have really influential platforms and I guess you know they should be the ones taking the responsibility to do better because if someone like Billy can do it then they don't really have an excuse I think I really love how whenever she sells out an arena and she's there for a while the food goes plant based there are water refill points there's like an eco village that Reverb does where they have lots of people who are campaigning and canvassing and tabling talking about the sorts of organizations that they run whether it's billy's mom's organization support and feed which provides plant-based meals to a lot of low-income folks her mom is one of my favorite people to follow she's amazing i love maggie my name is maggie baird i am the founder of support and feed i am the mother of billy eilish and phineas and i'm a citizen of the world and love my neighbors Ending hunger and fixing our broken food systems is important to me and one of the goals of Support & Feed.

16:31The mission of Support & Feed is to address climate change and food insecurity by taking action, moving the world toward a more equitable and sustainable plant-based food system. We first started Support & Feed at the beginning of the COVID lockdown. And because of that, we really thought it was sort of a crisis organization. We would feed a lot of people. But we realized as we feed people these beautiful meals, these soul-enriching meals, meals that are not just feeding them for an hour, but are giving them a respect of a beautiful restaurant-quality meal and nourishing them and helping them understand that plant-based food can be delicious and can make you feel great.

17:15We have a consistent presence in 11 cities in the U.S. We are also involved with other organizations around the world. And a lot of that is thanks to my children. So Billie's tour allowed us to expand, to feed people in the cities on her tour, and to connect with community organizations around the country that she was touring to. We were able later to do that with Paramore, and we've done with other artists. She's amazing. And I say that with such fondness because she is almost like a mom of the climate movement. she's such a kind person and just the grit that she has she's so dedicated to this um she's really good at explaining things as well and yeah and i think one of the reasons why i was really keen to speak to you is i think everything feels quite complicated yeah and i've listened to a few different interviews you've done and we've spoken a few times and i feel like you have a clarity to the way you talk about things and like been doing different research and you suddenly get into like tons and liters and emissions suddenly start to become this quite abstract yeah and not every day and not kind of manageable thing and i think one of the things i can't remember exactly what you said in a different interview but you were talking about the kind of the way in which obviously bp came up with the carbon footprint and how we've kind of individualized and personalized so much of this but whereas what you're doing with brian you know and earth percent is very much about well you can just give a percent of money and this will go to organizations that are doing the education that are like client earth taking on the the kind of governments and organizations so i i guess rather than needing to turn an entire venue plant-based sure or run your festival on different fuels like do you think artists are aware that there's those simple things that they could be doing and and do you think that that stuff is working in terms of systemic change So in terms of artists being able to donate money, like Earth Percent, for instance.

19:10Yeah, like a percent. Yeah. You know what? I think a lot of artists are probably aware of it. I mean, Brian has such an influential network of artists from his long, illustrious career. And also, it's a testament to the community building that he does. He's such an incredible glue who brings people together from all walks of life, not just in music as well. and also I bumped into some people here who work at Sony Music Publishing and they are very aware of the work that Earth Percent's doing and Earth Sonic as well and it just goes to show that there are kind of folks who work in impact in the music industry who are trying to push these ideas as well and really trying to bring people on board so I would say that the awareness is there to a certain degree not everyone knows about them of course but I think actually the biggest fear that people have is they're afraid of getting it wrong now something like pledging one percent of what you earn to the planet it feels pretty low risk but I think actually from a lot of artists that I've met that they do want to be part of the change but they're they're almost just like okay I can do that but what more can I do um what feels personal what feels authentic and I think there's a large part of the hindrance that revolves around fear and just inauthenticity.

20:36Like they really want to do something, but they're just afraid of being called out or being seen as hypocrites. But at this point, I guess my piece of advice to people who feel that way is, you know what? We don't have much time and we really need everyone to get involved. And you'd be surprised i think bands are actually more encouraging of doing something than nothing at all i'd certainly would be um you know it's not something that um they're most responsible for either realistically speaking music industry is not the most responsible when it comes to climate change there is an entire industry actively pumping out co2 into the atmosphere and are lobbying our major conferences and bribing politicians to not enforce climate laws like that's pretty scary the music industry and music fans do use the energy grid they do and now that things are streaming like there's different ways in which people are consuming music sure but then most of where we exist online is on platforms and the inshittification which is the corey doctorate term of just like adding nonsense functionality like the yeah ai dj on spot oh god and that is burning up more energy in the water just sure just to play so they are still yeah they're still part of the solution and the problem um i think perhaps people are aware that there is a footprint attached to their artistry their name it's the fear i think that they're going to be lumped in with the big bad guys um at least that's what i found from talking to artists and also this common rhetoric which is i don't know what to do i want to do something but i don't know what to do and also the fact that the music space at the moment it's so hard to survive like most artists i know are barely making ends meet and they don't want to compromise any chance of being financially sustainable.

22:42I mean, just if we're going to talk about, say, something like what was happening in Palestine, what is happening in Palestine, the genocide, so many artists would come up with this common grievance which was, I've just been warned or told off or said that I can't speak about this and that I'll get dropped from my record label and things like that. And I can imagine there are probably also similar circumstances is to do with being politically vocal about climate change in the fossil fuel industry. Now, the landscape of mainstream campaigning has changed quite a bit with movements coming and going and dying down and rising up.

23:22And we've seen that with the climate movement, it's seen to have gone a lot quieter compared to the so-called heydays of 2018 and 2019. I mean, even at Glastonbury, it was in a heatwave. And I don't think a single art, like I watched a lot and I looked up a load of different things I don't think I saw any artist talking yeah joining the dots between you are out here sweating yeah and when you go home you should be taking on the billionaires and the corporations yeah treating our planet in the way they are yeah I guess one one conversation we've had before is is using a term like climate too complicated because we can't see or feel or touch it whereas you can protect nature you can protect future generations and there's something that idea of people wanting to be a protector or someone wants to be a defender does that does that language help or does it yeah it's interesting because we've laid a lot of groundwork for the climate movement this has been a term that's come up time and time again um especially when talking about you know the impacts of climate change or how this energy source impacts the climate or we can reduce climate emissions i mean it's it's just such a common word in the the lexicon of how we talk about environmentalism that i think yeah a lot of people haven't really given it much thought but actually when you talk to people outside of that space it's not a term that really resonates with them like you said it doesn't feel very tangible and i think that there's almost um a part of it that has become tainted by mainstream media and like there's such a distinct portrayal of people in the climate movement that it's become something that isn't really cool to talk about or interesting to talk about now obviously the person who campaigns in the climate in me says no guys we need to care about this like can we just get over ourselves and actually just like stop bickering over terminology but actually I think the work that I've done in the music space and meeting people outside of my own bubble has really made me appreciate that sometimes leading with climate isn't necessarily the best thing to get them to act on the climate.

25:35I think something that's really helped is thinking about, okay, what is it that they actually care about and how can I tie climate into that or show that it is a great magnifier for every single crisis on this planet? I mean, you know, when working on the Together for Palestine concert and kind of attending these sessions with artists who wanted to learn about Palestine, they were really engaged and they felt a duty to talk about it. And I think that's in part to do with pressure and also because it's horrific what's been happening and every human should feel compelled to speak out. But something like climate can often be left out of the picture when it comes to such an awful genocide, but it is very much front and center of what is happening.

26:27I mean, the military industrial complex is so carbon intensive. We're seeing ecocide be committed. Human rights are a part of climate justice. And so whenever I try and talk to people who are concerned about what's happening to Palestinians, I'm also like, you do realize that the war industrial complex is in bed with the fossil fuel industrial complex and like actually a really key way to tackle these crises from a unified angle is to think about fossil fuels and to think about the military and so I do feel like it's about asking them about what's kind of on their mind at the moment and then trying to bring in climate into that.

27:08I mean even as stuff as basic as the number of festivals cancelled because of extreme weather both both flooding and heat like and then the fires in LA that literally burnt down recording studios early this year and I think there's a lot of examples of this isn't something in the future right this is something that is happening now and I think one of the things I found when I've spoken to people the 1.5 element doesn't quite add up because people are so used to putting the oven on at 180 or 200 and not really knowing the difference but I don't think they can't feel so arbitrary to a lot of people um even to someone like me who's very conscious of like what these things actually entail and mean 1.5 has been so repeated and hammered into my psyche that it almost starts to lose meaning and i think it's because something like 1.5 we're not on track for and secondly like a lot of people don't really seem to understand what that entails what what that actually result in?

28:08What will that look like? What number of floods? What number of wildfires? I think people need to see something tangible as opposed to just this slightly obscure number that doesn't really hold much personal meaning to people. And I think that's also part of it. It's like in order to really transform people's behavior and communicate a crisis of this scale, it has to feel personal and numbers just don't really cut it for a lot of people.

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29:17You've spoken quite a bit about how intersectional, like, and literally we're just talking about it there, like with wars and military. Like, if it was an intersection, a junction, which I like, what other things would be at that crossroads? at the intersection between military and fossil fuels. And just like the climate movement, I feel like inequality is a huge one. Yeah, everything. I mean, gender inequality, racism, disability justice as well, injustice rather, just general human rights. Every single struggle and form of oppression enacted on humans and non-human animal others intersects with climate change.

30:01I can't name a single thing that isn't either exacerbated by or directly impacting the climate. Do you think that the world that we're living in right now, that music has really found its place in this space? For instance, I can't think of many records that's theme is what you can do or what is happening. There's lots of songs that like the featuring nature projects that Sounds Right are doing where you can credit nature. Sure. Like it's interesting. There's not like a big concept album. But then again, you go through like Kate Bush's catalog. There's all songs about nature and amongst that Bjork's catalog is full of.

30:47But I just wonder whether it feels like often we have these big political moments and there's like a song that you can attach to it or an album or a whole series of events. Do you feel like there's been that same kind of impetus? Not for a while. I don't feel like that that's been the case for a while. I think if you look at the music that kind of gets out there and gets streamed, so much of it has been deeply influenced by the social media landscape. And it's all about what hook sounds catchy and what can be attached to a trend. And it just all feels like deeply commodified. And I think that almost distracts us from the quote-unquote real world because we're seriously living in like this social media landscape where people are just trying to get something viral as opposed to create change and meaning um I think that's yeah deeply influenced the landscape of music I also think that you know while music is inherently political um I often remark that apolitical music is also a political stance yeah it's a reflection of the times that we live in and i think that in a world that's so fraught with tension and politicization people choosing to make music that is inherently apolitical is a reflection of the fact that it's seen as too contentious to be political so i think there is a real lack of uh yeah willingness to make this sort of music and also if you look at what sells it's not political music and i think it's also like you consider the darkness like it's not a cheery topic to talk about like and you just think that it's ripe for like some beautiful melancholic record like i know the cure have sort of touched on it and it's i don't know it just seems fascinating to me that of all the topics that songs are written about yeah and it's like you can't name like a big concept album that's based around all of this like i know that and shikari have written songs yeah but they're not like daytime radio one bangers yeah i think there's almost this feeling that music is an escape for a lot of people and when you have the world as it is constantly shoved down your throat probably the last thing you want to do is put your headphones on and listen to something that reminds you of how grim things are obviously people are doing that with this podcast i mean i do this every single day you know i can't switch off yeah i almost feel guilty asking you these questions because i know how like you've written a lot about eco-anxiety and eco-survivalism as you've been talking about it more recently and like i know the number of days i wake up and i'm like oh the guardian have stuck out a news story at 1am that just seems really bleak about the future of life on earth i know and then by 9am it's not even on their home page i know it's so scary isn't it it's it's something that i've been really conscious of lately that the consumption of so-called negative news um which you might also be able to substitute negative for realistic um and i have found that kind of by moving out of solely climate related spaces i've try to get into the heads of everyday people who don't engage with this kind of stuff and I can understand why um I think that's one of our greatest challenges is to think like other people who don't seem to be engaged with this and I don't think it's that they don't care it's just really hard to care about stuff when you're caring about a million and one other things that kind of fundamentally rely on you trying to put food on the table provide for other people or you know take care of yourself first and foremost in a really short window of time whereas something like climate change while it is an existential threat to people right now and has impacted people in the past as well it doesn't necessarily feel like it's on a lot of people's doorsteps and i feel like maybe that feeling that it's not an urgent thing even though it very much is stops them from feeling invested in the fight and do you think some of that is also because the biggest extractors and the biggest polluters are such big powerful organizations even countries yeah the like i think it's interesting listening to zach polanski like he's i don't think i've really heard him talk about the environmental climate in most of the last few months i've heard him talk a lot about inequality and billionaires yeah and obviously there was an amazing clip of billy recently speaking right to Mark Zuckerberg's face about how billionaires should be using their wealth.

35:36Yeah. We're in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than kind of ever, especially in our country. And I'd say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to some people that need it.

35:58And love you all, but there's a few people in here that have a lot more money than me.

36:09And if you're a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away shorties. Love you guys. Thank you so much. And I wonder whether a lot of this and a lot of the intersectional topics they're often entire media organizations set up by people with all their money and fossil fuel like i think this all connected they're like de-smog did a study and i think there's something like 65 percent of stories in the sun were like climate denial rather than yeah um and it's like rupert murdoch has probably got loads of money exactly i mean you know the media is also in bed with oil and gas and it's not surprising that the narratives that they're putting out there are really not in favour of climate action.

36:56And when you have something like that, that you're up against, the billionaires, whether it be billionaires in media or tech or in politics, it makes you feel really powerless. And I can see that a lot of people have become deeply disillusioned and very depressed and feeling like there is no hope, there is nothing that we can do. At the same time, I do feel like when things get so bad, there is this inevitability that actually the entire world is impacted. And so there is no other choice but to revolt. And I'm starting to see things like that bubble to the surface. And I do feel like you were talking about, you know, Zach Polanski's messaging campaign, not mentioning climate.

37:42I think it's very smart to talk about the one percent i think that is deeply intentional and is a really clever unifying tactic because there are so much more of us than of them and the billionaires are the ones who are driving us off the cliff edge as well their financial um investments assets their wealth as a whole is directly tied to some of the most polluting industries on the planet so by saying we need to either tax the super rich or you know hold them to account that's climate action in and of itself we don't have to label it as such and the interesting thing is that when you talk to so-called everyday people who might seem against the climate movement the people who criticize like just up oil activists for throwing soup you actually talk to them they care about exactly the same things that we do they want a good life for themselves and their families a lot of them have unfortunately been preyed upon by the super rich fed narratives and been manipulated and pitted against other minorities thinking that this is the way out scapegoating is such a powerful tactic and tool so i'm not surprised that unfortunately a lot of very vulnerable people have been manipulated and have been sort of you know commandeered to campaign and fight against people who are enduring just as bad hardships as them um it's sad it's very sad but you know i think that tactic of kind of unifying against the super rich is probably our best chance at this rate what are the solutions that the average person listening to this can actually do like and i was thinking about that when i was going through the questions it's like we've been tackling um spotify's royalties for ages we've just been going after like the amount of people that have left spotify now that they are running ice adverts and putting their money into ai war drones and suddenly artists are engaging they're like the no music for genocide campaign artists are engaging artists that have been completely silent for the last three years have all been engaging so i think that like you said like it does feel like the simmering is now starting to come to the boil yeah we're going to do a series in january about music and resilience and i'd be interested for you and for other people you know the role that music plays in resilience in finding the space that you do need to escape sure like how important a role does music play for you oh my gosh I mean it's like asking me how important oxygen is to my livelihood music is so important I feel like not only from a point of escapism but just joy and bringing people together everyone knows that feeling of like being in a room full of people who are all there to see this one artist and there's that one song that everyone knows and they feel so connected and so moved and for me that translates even further when I think about artists who are taking a stand for the world that I want to live in I remember when Billie came to the UK I think it was two summers ago now and she did like this really small surprise set at the electric ballroom in Camden and she was like oh my god I haven't done a small show in years because it's been 10 years since ocean ice came out and that's kind of what propelled her to stardom at 13 and also because of lockdown she sort of bypassed playing a lot of those smaller shows she got so big so yeah exactly and she was doing this really small show and all of the fans in the audience were just mesmerized you know and just so entranced by her every word and everything that she was saying and i was like that's what it's about like that's how you use your fandom and responsibly because there are so many people who would literally do anything for the artists that they love and I'm like how great is it that we have an artist who really stands on the right side of history and really tries to use their platform in and outside of their music so I remember that feeling and I remember thinking oh yeah this is the sector I want to work in because just look how compelled and moved these people are and I felt that as a fan of Billy's and also a consumer of music.

42:16Like also being neurodivergent, so much of the way that music moves through me is deeply, deeply emotional and powerful. And it can literally be the difference between me having a bad day and having a great day or me feeling like kind of a bit numb and then feel so emotional and compelled and compassionate about, yeah, the piece that I'm listening to. So yeah, music is a huge part of my life. It always has been. And that's a really funny thing is I remember when I was younger and I grew up in Hong Kong I kind of started doing like freelance work for this one production company that would bring indie acts to um east and southeast Asia and I remember thinking at that point I want to work in music and then that kind of fell to the sidelines and I was like well I'm working climate now I don't know if that's ever a thing that can combine and lo and behold here I am I'm like oh this feels like coming back home to myself in a weird way that really leads into my next question because here we are we're at earth sonic live it's a takeover of the natural history museum in manchester the manchester museum and music is right at the core of what this event is and i'm curious like you've you've been on stage you've spoken a couple of things today like events like this are kind of rare where it's like climate talks yeah and live performances on the skeleton of a whale yeah um do you think that that's there should be more of that like at festivals and just like and all the different like and also you were saying earlier about how the joy of music when you were talking like how the like parties are much better yeah like at some of the climate events are they needing djs and bands really are they really are a good friend of mine and fellow climate activist dominique palmer always says i don't want to be part of your revolution if i can't dance and i really love that saying because I think that taps into the necessity of joy not only as a motivator to continue campaigning but just part of our humanity and I think that one of the biggest shortcomings of large movements is that they don't have enough street parties, they don't have enough festivals and music and dance and art imbued into their existence and I think that's a huge disservice because it's just a great unifier it's a great way of bringing people together it makes people feel and I think feeling is what motivates change and without care and connection why bother you know so music for me is is everything and I think going down this route of bringing music and climate action together and it doesn't even have to just be climate action as it's colloquially known is something that makes me feel at home because I felt for so long that these worlds didn't intersect or that they didn't belong together and now that I get to do this kind of work I'm like oh yeah this is possible this is where real change for me begins.

45:21So I'll do very quick five final two questions. One carbon credits are a bit of a nonsense from can tell yeah there was a study the guardian did 94 of rainforest carbon credits certified by vera they're the world's leading certifier yeah um what called phantom credits they don't represent real climate benefits yes spotify shell disney and all these people buy them like and i think like taylor swift bought loads of carbon credits to offset her tour and yeah like what should people be doing instead i mean obviously not using carbon in the first place i'm guessing but I mean, I liken carbon credits to a get out of jail free card.