Guster rocks carbon neutrality movement

Author: Brian Fung

Concert-goers entering Kenyon Arena for last Friday's Guster show were met at the door by three College students sporting green T-shirts and messenger bags filled with goodies.

"Would you like some free lip balm?" said Emily May '10 to one couple and their children. "It's organic."

"Or how about a carbon-offset sticker?" offered Brian Swartz '10. "For five bucks, you can offset the carbon emissions you made by coming here."

The couple bought two stickers, leaving May and Swartz to greet the next group of ticket-holders eager for a glimpse of the latest band to embrace what has become a growing grassroots environmental movement in the United States.

For the past six weeks, Guster has been touring the nation to promote green awareness and to rally student activists on college campuses. The band's stop at Middlebury on April 27 represented one performance in a series being jointly produced by Guster and non-profit eco-group Reverb.

"We're basically connecting with students across the country and talking about environmental issues," said Reverb co-founder Lauren Sullivan. "And we're bringing out our eco-village, where we have a sampling of eco-friendly ice cream and smoothies and signups for renewable energy credits."

Guster and Reverb's joint venture, officially called the Campus Consciousness Tour, enjoys the support of other major businesses and organizations also committed to a carbon-neutral United States. Carbon emissions produced by the tour have been offset through the purchase of emissions credits from Vermont-based renewable energy company NativeEnergy. On the floor of Kenyon Arena last Friday, tour members and College volunteers erected an eco-village sponsored in part by Stonyfield Farms. A larger-than-life inflatable rendition of the dairy company's new organic energy drink, Shift, stood watch as students approached the Shift Consciousness Pavilion to learn about carbon neutrality.

Most of the tents were manned by College students who had e-mailed Guster expressing their interest in volunteering during the event.

"Everyone on Guster's mailing list got an e-mail saying that if they wanted to volunteer, they had to write an e-mail with a few sentences explaining why they deserved to," said Mary Lane '10. "I pulled together 10 to 15 of [Guster's] song titles saying why [I supported the push for] carbon neutrality and why I wanted to help out. And they e-mailed me back saying I could do it."

"We wanted to help out," said Dan Neslusan '09.5, another volunteer. "So we're here giving out free stuff and selling carbon-neutrality stickers."

Further down the line, students were treated to free samples of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The Vermont-based company had struck a deal with Guster and Reverb before the tour as a part of its own "Lick Global Warming" campaign.

"We have scoopers called in from shops in the area to scoop ice cream, which is also supplied locally," said Jordan Kemler, who was contracted to work for Ben and Jerry's for the duration of the tour. "We're trying to bring awareness of global warming and we're asking people to support the Boxer-Sanders Bill, which is in the Senate right now."

The bill, which has already received the endorsement of 11 U.S. senators, calls for sweeping changes to reduce carbon emissions in America by the year 2050, according to the Web site for the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.

In addition to drumming up political support for carbon neutrality, Reverb and Guster have been coordinating with industry interests as well. On April 10, Guster released its latest EP, Satellite, with help from Warner Brothers, which adopted environmentally-friendly packaging practices to produce a fully carbon-neutral album.

"We're trying to work with Warner Brothers, and other artists, to get out more carbon-neutral releases," said Sullivan, "and also to look at the processing of the packages. What are they wrapped with? Can they be wrapped with corn-based plastics instead of petroleum-based plastics? How far will these things be traveling, so we can calculate their carbon footprint?"

Despite Reverb's involvement with politics and business, however, Sullivan made clear that the public would always be the non-profit's first resource.

"We're working with folks in the industry, but our mission is to bring our emissions tour to the music industry at large," said Sullivan. "Students have been really engaged. We're all learning from each other, so folks who have been taking classes and who know about wind power and biodiesel come up to us, and we have discussions about it. We're all having a great time just talking about it."

The spirit of mutual education and collaboration also spurred Sullivan's husband and Guster guitarist and vocalist Adam Gardner to action.

"The more I learned about it, the more I became passionate about it," said Gardner in a phone interview. "I feel like I went from zero to a hundred really quickly. And I was like, 'I bet I'm not the only person who would react that way to this information.' So that's sort of where Reverb was born."

According to Gardner, college-age students enjoy the greatest opportunity to promote environmentalism because of their economic influence on business and industry.

"We all buy lots of things," said Gardner, "and consumer power is something not to be underestimated. You can truly 'vote with your dollars.' As consumers, we can say something to these companies, saying, 'Look, this is important.' And if we can create demand for environmentally-friendly products, they will make them - because that's where the money is."

Guster's grassroots approach to environmentalism has met with success at virtually every stop on the Campus Consciousness Tour, drawing thousands of curious fans and hundreds of passionate volunteers.

"I love Guster, first of all," said May after giving out another handful of free organic lip balm. "But second of all, I'm also involved in the carbon neutrality initiative here. We do as much as we can to help out."

Swartz nodded in agreement and laughed. "We enjoy preaching the good word."