Thom Yorke guest-edits a climate special of Observer Magazine

Thom Yorke has guest-edited a climate change special of Observer Magazine, out today, and in a piece for the Guardian website he says what Radiohead learnt when they looked at their impact.

With Radiohead, the most shocking yet obvious thing we discovered was that the way people travel to our shows has the biggest impact.

Thom Yorke¹

The band now choose venues served by public transport, run a new lighting rig from highly efficient generators and have deals with hauliers to cut their emissions. Yorke calls the changes small but in the right direction.

His interest goes back to 2000, when he and Stanley Donwood were working on the Kid A artwork and came across the Worldwatch Institute's website. It is why the sleeve shows a mountain range. After the UN's 2003 report on climate change he joined Friends of the Earth, and later backed its Big Ask campaign for a climate law.

The government has promised that law, but the bill, Yorke says, leaves out the UK's share of international flights, and its 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide by 2050 rests on old science when researchers now call for at least 80. He is disappointed with Gordon Brown.

Unlike James Lovelock, though, he does not think the world is doomed, and he says it is never time to give up hope.