Pop stars and their trees

Pop stars and their trees

Trees for Cities has used freedom of information laws to discover how much Future Forests was paying for the carbon rights to Forestry Commission land in England and to Highlands and Islands Enterprise plantations in Scotland.

Coldplay are reported by the Sunday times as being "the latest pop stars to “carbon neutralise” their music by paying for enough saplings to absorb the carbon dioxide produced by their latest album and tour." They have paid £105,000 to buy the carbon rights to 50,000 trees in Mexico and have 10,000 mango trees in their name in India from a previous album and tour.

However, conservationists argue that the good intentions of the tree-purchasing pop stars (which include Dido, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and KT Tunstall) may be in vain because the CO2 is absorbed only for the life of the tree. When it dies, the gas is released back into the atmosphere.

Rock stars' green trees may be hot air (Sunday Times, 29 January 2006)