'I made excuses': music industry frets over becoming carbon neutral

Coldplay and Massive Attack have pledged greener tours - but is the billion-pound gigging industry compatible with eco activism?

As they released their eighth album, Everyday Life, Coldplay announced last week that they would not be taking it on tour, instead performing the album just once on British soil at the Natural History Museum. Frontman Chris Martin expressed his concerns about the future of touring, highlighting the difficulties of reconciling flying with environmentalism and expressed a wish to see a Coldplay show run largely on solar power with no single-use plastic. Snark was instant - "Coldplay announces plan to spare planet the effects of future Coldplay concerts" ran one headline - but others lauded the move: the band's previous tour featured 122 shows across five continents and generated 405m.

Massive Attack also declared this week that "business as usual is over'' as they begin working with the University of Manchester's Tyndall Centre to map the carbon footprint of tours and work on a blueprint to reform the industry, a message similarly shared by Billy Bragg on his recent tour.