Besides my very full life as an orchestral musician in the National Symphony Orchestra, I am also a climate activist. I am in the leadership of 350MoCo, a community-based grassroots organization in my home of Montgomery County, Maryland. As part of the global 350.org network, we work on a wide variety of actions and campaigns to fight the climate emergency both locally and nationally. I have organized rallies, met with local politicians, written legislation, and even played music to help change the systems and practices that keep pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Needless to say, I was excited and intrigued to see “Touring and the Climate-Smart Orchestra,” an article in Symphony discussing my own orchestra’s efforts to think about climate as it relates to touring. I read the article in Frankfurt, Germany while on the very tour referenced in the article! It’s rare that I see something connecting my two passions and talking about how one impacts the other.
I am happy and proud that the NSO is devoting time and resources to its climate impacts. When people see organizations and people they care about talking about the climate emergency, they feel more motivated to talk about it and act on it themselves. But what specific actions we take also have meaning and communicate our thoughts, and any orchestra that wants to take climate impacts seriously needs to take steps to broaden its thinking and imagination about what, how, and when it takes actions—and then speak about those actions.
Jeffrey Weisner, at right in green shirt, marches with 350MoCo at the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C., Earth Day 2017.
In the Symphony article, NSO Executive Director Jean Davidson is quoted: “ ‘We’re approaching this from a place of humility,’ Davidson says, adding that NSO leadership is conscious of not wanting the partnership with American Forests to seem like greenwashing, or a public gesture toward caring about the environment without additional substance behind it.” And it is true that reforestation has a positive impact on climate and environment in both the short and long term, although there is considerable debate in the scientific community as to how much impact on climate comes from these types of projects. American Forests, with whom the NSO collaborated on this project, is a venerable and high-quality organization, and I am confident that this project will have excellent preparation, modelling, and follow-up work.
However, even when done well, reforestation is problematic when done to offset current emissions. By basing the amount of trees planted on the estimated carbon impact of the tour, and by announcing it alongside the tour press release (including the production of this video), the orchestra seems to imply that the project offsets the emissions of the tour. This is inaccurate on several levels. The most salient is that it ignores the most important part of the climate emergency: time. There is near-universal agreement among scientists that rapid emissions reductions over the next decade are essential to give us a chance to avoid catastrophic warming. The emissions produced by our tour are already in the atmosphere, while any carbon benefit from the reforestation project will not be fully realized for 50 years. If your mortgage lender is going to foreclose on you in a month, promising to pay him 50 years from now is not a sufficient response to the situation.
Orchestras have a unique position to model what is possible on climate in the arts world and beyond.
As already mentioned, forest restoration projects are themselves potentially problematic as regards climate. Time is again our enemy. This project is reforesting an area already burned by wildfire fueled in part by rising temperatures. While the project is reforesting with more resilient species, it still cannot guarantee that the forest may not burn again in the next 50 years, literally putting all the climate gains up in smoke. The future is hard to predict in an era of rapid climate change.
What are some alternate ways that orchestras can consider their climate impact?
- Be cautious about actual or implied offsets. When any person or organization announces any sort of program to cover the climate impacts of a specific activity like a tour, they face many challenges. Very few offset programs are sufficiently rigorous to accurately guarantee a certain amount of emissions reduction. Also, showing an offset implies that we can pay a sort of climate penalty and then continue with business as usual, when the truth is we must reconsider all our choices as part of a systemic interaction with climate. Climate leadership means addressing our emissions now.
- Use systems thinking. An orchestra is a business that is constantly producing various types of emissions through its actions. While a tour is a high-profile event that produces a lot of emissions, tours can pale next to the ongoing emissions of regular operations. These emissions happen every year, with or without any touring. Think of touring or any activity as part of the complete activity of your orchestra. Then you can make choices based on long-term impact.
- Energy, transportation, and buildings. These three sources are the vast majority of carbon emissions in the U.S. Orchestras can consider many ways to reduce emissions in any of these areas. In addition, states, localities, and the federal government offer a wide range of funding, logistical, and other support for businesses in these areas. Don’t assume a change is impossible—learn your options. Many of these changes can reduce costs as well. If you retrofit your building to need less heating/AC, or switch to a heat pump system from a fossil fuel-based system, you may end up paying less for a lower-emissions system.
- Evaluate touring from a mission-driven perspective. The Symphony article begins with the sentence, “The benefits of orchestra touring are easy to name.” I think the realities of touring are much more complex than this. For most orchestras, touring is a major fundraising commitment, and the logistics of touring place an enormous burden on staff. And as a musician myself, I can testify to the strain placed on orchestra musicians by performing on the road while away from their families and support networks. Orchestras should consider from a mission-driven perspective whether touring justifies these costs. Could that fundraising time instead be dedicated to local community concerts? Could a tour be in your home state instead of abroad? Could staff time be better spent on the development of local audiences? From a climate perspective, the lowest-emission tour is one you decide not to undertake, or that you carefully organize and target to best serve the mission of the orchestra.
As non-profit arts institutions, orchestras have a unique position to model what is possible on climate in the arts world and beyond. And I’m so excited that my own orchestra is grappling with these topics. I have been unable in this short article to address all these issues in enough detail. I apologize for any errors or misunderstandings in this article. This applies to both climate and to orchestras! By considering climate impacts in a holistic way, orchestras can make wiser choices and model true leadership on this issue.
