Madonna’s new single, Hey You, urges people to take their impact on the environment into consideration. The video for the track, which was released to coincide with Live Earth, the Wembley concert of which she headlined, shows melting ice caps and planes taking off.
To test how truly green the Material Girl is though, John Buckley from the company Carbon Footprint along with BBC London, examined the number of flights and car journeys the star and her entourage have embarked on in the last calendar year.
The singer’s was invited to cooperate with this project, but apparently her management declined the offer, so the data to analyse was collected by leaving posts for her fans on her messageboard.
Using the dates and information submitted by dedicated Madonna followers, it was realised that in the 12 months since May 2006 the Like A Virgin star had perforned a whopping 56 concerts across the world.
The majority of this travelling was due to her ‘Confessions Tour’ - one of the biggest pop music has ever seen. Throughtout this travelling at least 100 people, including crew and dancers travelled with her. Based on these figures, it was calculated that over 651 tonnes of carbon had been generated by the worldwide tour!
The audit then continued to analyse her trips by private jet to Africa to arrange the adoption of her son, personal appearances and holidays - many of which ofcourse including staff.
Madonna also has two range rovers and four cars - contributing a further 8 tonnes of Carbon each year.
Madonna’s total carbon footprint for the last 12 months was estimated at 1,017 tonnes. Mr. Buckley claimed this would cost her approximately 6,000 to offset.
“Madonna produces the same amount of carbon as 102 average Britons,” evaluated Mr Buckley. “Even though she runs a global business she’s also set herself up as some sort of ambassador for the environment. Therefore she needs to be seen to be walking the walk as well as singing the song.”
ref. http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/07/03/madonna_carbon_footprint_feature.shtml
July 15th, 2007 at 9:25 am
What’s £6k to Madonna? Surely she should just pay this and try to scratch back some kind of respect in this area. I wonder what her reaction was to the results, or if she personally ever got to hear of them. I agree that it’s good to have high-profile people raising awareness, but ‘do as I say not do as I do’ is not a good way to go about this.
If she was to pay the £6k ofcourse, she’d have to be very careful how she did it, as there is so much scepticism around carbon offsetting. But I’m sure she’d have the best advisors, and many companies would be more than willing to help.