Brian Eno has said politicians are doing little to address the growing issue of climate change, despite the fact it’s happening “quite fast”.
The legendary musician, composer and producer made the comments in a new interview with the BBC’s World Service’s In The Studio programme.
Eno has long championed environmental causes and set up the charity organisation EarthPercent in 2021, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of the music industry. Artists to have collaborated with Eno on the project previously include R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Coldplay, CHVRCHES, Nile Rogers and Anna Calvi.
Speaking about climate change in the interview, Eno said: “I notice that hardly any of our politicians are talking about the most important problem. The most important problem isn’t a few immigrants coming into the country on boats. The most important problem isn’t China developing AI. The most important problem is that the ship is sinking, and it’s happening quite fast, and a lot of my friends and people I knew were also concerned about this issue. What can we do about it? Those people in government aren’t doing anything about it. How can the rest of us do anything? Well, we have to somehow take it into our own hands.”
On his charity EarthPercent and how it aims to raise money, Eno added: “This idea of tapping into the very many income streams that there are in music and saying to people, would you give us 1 per cent of that? Would you give us one per cent of your tour income? Would you give us one per cent of an album income? So we want to sort of insert a little tap to that huge flow and siphon some off and put it into these good people who are doing great work all over the world, people working in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, local people who look after the forest. It’s where they live.
“Those are the people we should be giving money to,” he continued. “They know how it works there, and they have every reason. So we wanted EarthPercent to be a place that sort of sucks in a little bit of all this vast amount of money that goes through the music business and feeds it back out to these people who are, in fact, the people protecting our future. It’s a very simple idea, and it’s starting to work.”
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Last month, it was announced that Eno will be teaching a songwriting course early next year.
On November 13, the School Of Song announced its January 2025 program, which will see Eno conduct a songwriting course for its applicants. The course, titled Songwriting With Brian Eno, will take place over the course of a month.
The School of Song wrote on social media to announce the course: “School of Song is overjoyed to announce that Brian Eno will be leading our Songwriting Workshop in January 2025. Come join us as @brianeno guides us through his multifaceted relationship to the creative process.”
The course will see Eno conduct four lectures via Zoom, lead hour-long Q&A sessions with students, song-share sessions and even a live in-class writing exercise with the musician himself. Topics being covered during the course include The Role Of Surrender, Avant Gardening, Oblique Strategies and more.
The program will cost $160 (£126), with registration closing on January 4. You can register for the course here.
Eno said in a statement per the course website: “I’m looking forward to the chance to properly articulate some ideas about the creative process that have been fermenting over the last 50 years. To be able to do this with some fresh young minds and imaginations was a chance that I couldn’t refuse.”