Pearl Jam Plant Trees To Offset US Tour Carbon Footprint

Pearl Jam have invested $210,000 to plant trees in Washington in a bid to offset the carbon footprint left behind by their 2009 US tour.

The group's investment covers their own travel and hotel contributions, as well as the emissions by fans who travelled to dates on the 32-date jaunt.

As well as Washington, the band also want to build similar urban forests in Seattle, Kent, Kirkland and Redmond.

"Pearl Jam is a band but we are also a business," guitarist and co-founder Stone Gossard told Reuters.

"We're seeing ourselves as a Washington business, a regional business that is acknowledging its carbon footprint and hoping to inspire other businesses."

Gossard added that the sporadic support of musicians and celebrities to slow climate change was not enough, and that "consistent business policy" was needed.

Pearl Jam made a similar investment in 2003 and are continuing to look at ways to minimise their footprint.

The band are set to headline the Hard Rock Calling festival in London this summer.

Thanks for the report to Gigwise.com.

Comments

[cuige]

Haha. Brilliant! Seeing them in Dublin in June! Can't wait!

[zeroordie6868]

I don't know, it might be real. They gave credit to a website at the end unlike the scientific one so it may actually be legit.

[MAYNARD]

It's legit. I just seen they were offsetting their co2 emmission, maybe they went about it in a different way, but the article is at least half right

[metal@hart11]

i thought this might be april fools but it actually sounds legit and makes sense! i dont think this is a joke

[IsThereLoveInSp]

This is amazing

[TBezza]

The link says 31st march, could be true then. Hardly an epic april fools though is it?

[tenacioust04]

This is real, i saw it two days ago

[Apejack Cuba]

Googling the quotes in the article links them to other articles from the 30th and 31st. Not an April Fool's article, just Ultimate Guitar being bad at getting music news on time like always.

[fireoptic]

Too bad CO2 is good for the environment. Nice of them to plant trees anyway. Global warming is caused by sun spots. The ocean is the biggest "polluter" of CO2, as it is the cause of 95% of the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

[Darth_Qurashi]

hehe ok, i gues i started too soon. i was already writing off the articles from yesterday cuz i thought they were all april fools, lol my bad

[down n dirty]

I like how it said there planting trees in washington as well as seattle, kirkland, redmond and whatnot when all of those are in washington.

Nobody try and tell me there talking about washington dc or your comment is automatically invalid.

[Chaingarden]

I was hoping this was a joke...

[shwilly]

Zeppelin Addict wrote:

cuige wrote:

Wait! Is this April Fools?

haha im not taking a single article seriously today.. seen the scientific one yet? UG youre f***in with my head

I see why you might think that, but this one actually has something to do with UG's wonderful lil' habit of posting stories like these a few days after they were written

This one's from last monday...

[SGstriker]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised one way or another if they did something like this, April Fools or not, cool and good for them?

[i_am_metalhead]

I love how they are trying to battle global warm... erm... climate change? Hmmm, democrats were wrong about global warming so they had to coin a new term for the naturally occurring change in the earth's climate? Go back and look in the history books - the planet has been cycling in and out of ice ages for billions of years. Whats going on is normal.

[peter0unger]

climate change.. What a joke.. and what a waste of money on their part

[Bjorney]

fireoptic wrote:

Too bad CO2 is good for the environment. Nice of them to plant trees anyway. Global warming is caused by sun spots. The ocean is the biggest "polluter" of CO2, as it is the cause of 95% of the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

Too bad the article is talking about CO not CO2 but good job throwing out irrelevant information to sound like you know something

[jimmyslashpage]

i_am_metalhead wrote:

I love how they are trying to battle global warm... erm... climate change? Hmmm, democrats were wrong about global warming so they had to coin a new term for the naturally occurring change in the earth's climate? Go back and look in the history books - the planet has been cycling in and out of ice ages for billions of years. Whats going on is normal.

You do know they call it climate change because the term "global warming" caused people to think that the earth would simply get hot as opposed to the shift that the melting polar ice caps would cause.

peter0unger wrote:

climate change.. What a joke.. and what a waste of money on their part

and planting trees is a waste of money??

[korn_dawg]

Bjorney wrote:

fireoptic wrote:

Too bad CO2 is good for the environment. Nice of them to plant trees anyway. Global warming is caused by sun spots. The ocean is the biggest "polluter" of CO2, as it is the cause of 95% of the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

Too bad the article is talking about CO not CO2 but good job throwing out irrelevant information to sound like you know something

Carbon footprints are a measure of the GHGs that an entity produces. By far the most common of these is CO2, so much so that calculating a carbon footprint is usually just the calculation of how much CO2 an entity produces. In short, that was quite a hypocritical comment.

[Maggot66]

This is real, look at the real article, it was posted on the 31st.

[aig91]

Checked

[mookiemoochie16]

I love Pearl Jam...very cool of them to do.

[outlawtorn003]

They are planting trees to offset their carbon footprint. It was on the radio a few days ago.

[Soma3009]

I live in Washington. There's too many ****ing trees here already. You should know that, Pearl Jam.

[PAsistem]

april fools?

[sonoflife]

damn hippies

backspacer is awesome!

[rgt42dx]

That's great man! Really Awesome. Full support for such awareness.

[Abom]

I remember when Chris Martin did this. Within a year every tree was dead

[dwhitend93]

I think it's a good thing regardless of whether global warming/ climate change is real... We do a lot of taking away from the environment so its natural that we try to give back. We can't just go forever continuing to take without expecting any consequences.

[Anjohl]

Um, they are still contributing to the CO saturation, which could contribute to a feedback loop and still end all life.

Planting trees is a noble gesture, but that's all it is, a gesture.

[xstatic44]

Though I am not exactly a fan of Pearl Jam's political dispositions, you've certainly got to respect a band who practices what they preach. The un-U2, as it were.