Over 2,000 UK music industry bodies have signed up for Music Declares Emergency
The xx and The 1975 are two UK bands who have signed their names to an emergency climate change campaign, Music Week reports.
Music Declares Emergency (MDE) is a music industry collective that launched this summer with initial backing from AIM, Abbey Road Studios, The BRIT School, and more with a declaration of a climate emergency. They have amassed 2,000 signatories to the declaration, with recent additions (besides The xx and The 1975) including The BPI, The BRITs, Kobalt Music Group, The Musicians’ Union, and Rough Trade Shops.
This Friday (September 20), MDE has organised Labels Strike for Climate, which will see independent record labels XL, Young Turks, Full Time Hobby, and Ninja Tune participate in the climate strike on London’s Parliament Square. This will be followed on September 30 with a meeting that will determine their future actions.
The 1975 have been vocal about the need to urgently fight off climate catastrophe, having teamed up with climate campaigner Greta Thunberg for “The 1975”, from their forthcoming album Notes on a Conditional Form, with proceeds from track sales going to Extinction Rebellion. Jamie Oborne, the band’s manager of founder of the label Dirty Hit, has said the group and label are beginning to minimise their environmental impact, phasing out single-use plastic, minimising the production of plastic products, and making eco-friendly merchandise.
Oborne previously said that they are not being hypocritical taking a stance on the climate crisis while themselves not being 100 per cent carbon efficient, as The Guardian has noted: “We’re not going to have touring worked out in six weeks because everything’s working against you, but we are going to have it sorted out in a period of time, and 50 per cent is better than nothing. If everyone pushes responsibility onto other people because they can’t completely solve (the issue), we’re already fucked.”
Listen to “The 1975” with Greta Thunberg below.