The Sunday Times puts a carbon cost on Hail to the Thief

Days after Thom Yorke fronted Friends of the Earth's The Big Ask, a campaign for a law to cut the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by three per cent a year, The Sunday Times has turned the question on his band. The paper asked the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management to estimate the emissions from Hail to the Thief, Radiohead's last album, and the tour that went with it.

The centre's answer is that 50,000 trees would have to be planted and looked after for 100 years to absorb the carbon dioxide produced. The paper accepts that the figures are not unusual for a pop band, and presents them as a sign of how complicated the arguments about protecting the planet can be.

It sets the audit against Yorke's own words at the launch, where he called the music industry a striking example of fast-turnover consumer culture and said record companies should take the environment into account in the way they operate.