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pogal Newbie

pogal

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I think so. You could give them individual designations in the same way too ; One could be Strawberry Jammer, another could be elderflower jammer, and yet another could blackberry jammer. And they could write in the colour of the jam they are - it would be much more colourful and make the thread exciting.

What about it you jammers? Any specific flavours that people want to put dibs on early?

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sifi Newbie

sifi

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Not just Jammers, we are also known by many other names...

buggers (Holland)

tenclubbers (everywhere)

vedheads (Latin America)

even-flow-psychos (US/UK)

no coders (Italy)

twat-with-shit-taste-in-music (Web forums in the UK)

:blink:

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Cultseeker Newbie

Cultseeker

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I think so. You could give them individual designations in the same way too ; One could be Strawberry Jammer, another could be elderflower jammer, and yet another could blackberry jammer. And they could write in the colour of the jam they are - it would be much more colourful and make the thread exciting.

What about it you jammers? Any specific flavours that people want to put dibs on early?

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Olivavu Newbie

Olivavu

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Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard on CI Live

14 August 2006, 1:00 PM EDT

Climate change is among the greatest threats to biodiversity today. If left unchecked, it could prompt the extinction of tens of thousands of species in as few as 50 years.

Following is a transcript of our CI Live discussion with Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard on Aug. 14, 2006. Stone took questions from individuals worldwide about the importance of mitigating climate change and, specifically, about Pearl Jam's efforts to offset the carbon footprint of its 2006 concert tour.

Transcript...

Jen Shatwell, CI Moderator:

Welcome to CI Live!

Thank you all for joining Conservation International today for a very special discussion with Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. Having offset the 5,700 tons of CO2 generated by its 2003 tour, Pearl Jam is partnering with CI again to offset the carbon footprint of its 2006 concert tour. The band's investment this year will be used to help restore degraded tropical forests in Ecuador.

CI is proud to be among nine organizations in Pearl Jam’s “carbon portfolio,” and we’re thrilled to welcome Stone Gossard to CI Live today to tell us more about his and the band’s environmental commitments.

Welcome, Stone.

Stone Gossard:

I’m excited about this. I’ve never done an online chat before, that I’m aware of. So this is something new for me. Just looking over the initial questions, I’m intrigued and very happy to be involved.

Erika:

What made the band originally decide that they wanted to offset the tour emissions? Why do you think more people aren't taking similar measures to reduce their impact, even in small ways?

Stone Gossard:

I met Peter Seligmann almost 8 years ago through a very good friend of mine here in Seattle, and I got to know CI by talking with him. We spent time together diving, and I got to know more about CI and how it operates. I was impressed by their scope and overall strategy in terms of identifying and protecting environmental hotspots.

I thought this was the right approach in terms of a pragmatic approach to conservation. It’s proactive and politically smart. Because of this relationship, CI helped us do our very first carbon offset for the 2003 tour, which you can read more about on the CI website. The size and scope of work CI does is tremendous, and I’m proud to have them be one of the nine organizations that we’re supporting in our carbon portfolio strategy.

Nate Roth:

Stone,

Does the band account for harmful emissions from fans who drive/fly great distances to see PJ's epic performances?

Stone Gossard:

What we’re dealing with is not an exact science in terms of getting an exact carbon footprint, but it’s really a rough estimation, and we’re always fine tuning. We’ve estimated conservatively – that is, every fan driving by him or herself about 10-15 miles to reach a concert. So we’re trying to cover more carbon than we’re actually emitting.

Those individuals who are following the band can take steps on their own to figure out if they’re doing a lot of travel that year and calculate and offset their individual carbon emissions.

We may be able to double cover it.

Marko Erovic:

What do you do on daily basis in order to reduce CO2 emissions - what is your personal contribution as common citizen ?

Stone Gossard:

There are lots of things I could do, and I do some of them. One of those things is ride my bike as much as possible. If I have to go to the office or the studio, about 90 percent of the time, unless it's raining, I’ll ride my bike.

I try to remember to turn off the lights when I leave the house. I make sure the heat is off when I’m out. Those are big.

Some things that I hope to do in the long run is buy a more energy efficient refrigerator and water heater. Those are two big users of electricity. Even though Washington State gets most of its electricity through hydro-electric power, in the long run I’d like to support any companies that are making more energy-efficient products.

Joseph Donahoo:

We drive a hybrid, use public transport, light with compact fluorescent bulbs, have a high efficiency air conditioner with electronic thermostat, etc. But my wife and I fly regularly for work.

What can we do about our CO2 footprint, given the CO2 air-travel creates?

Stone Gossard:

Everyone has to balance out what their job is – it will require a certain amount of carbon output. Where you can make inroads is in becoming more energy efficient if you can. If you can’t, a carbon offset or doing something to counteract the carbon you’re emitting is a great way to go.

This particular project with CI – replanting native species in what was degraded Ecuadorian rain forest is one component of Pearl Jam’s offset. We’ve also invested in Green Tags through Bonneville Environmental Foundation and also through Honor the Earth. These allow people to pay a premium to bring more clean, renewable energy online to the grid.

There are a variety of other organizations doing a variety of things to promote clean, renewable energy or restore degraded lands with tress. These are bold, great opportunities with which you can begin to address your carbon issues.

Luke Zakrzewski:

Has the awareness of the amount of emissions generated from touring and concern for offseting these emissions had an effect on the planning of show dates, locations, and time. Also, Does the offset investment include emissions generated by the fans that attend Pearl Jam Concerts.

ps. been a HUGE PJ fan since day one. I will never forget listening to ten for the first time in the back of parents minivan when I was 14.

Thank You for your time.

Stone Gossard:

Thanks, Luke. Yes we do try to make the most of our travel. It’s to our own financial advantage to make our tour as efficient as possible in terms of gas burning and getting to the next location as quickly as possible. We’re always looking for other ways to be efficient on tour with our energy use.

One of the ways we’re reducing our bus and truck diesel is to use biodiesels, which I have been told cuts emissions significantly. We buy the biofuels from individual farms and folks, all bought here in the U.S., rather than imported from long distances.

Kyle Cunningham:

Stone, you are my hero, man. Not only for the awesome music but also for your enviromental concerns. I'm a 17 year old high school student(and Ten Club member) and my question is why do you think the problem of Global Warming is so divided between the left and right and what do you think can be done to educate and organize the general public better?

P.S. Thanks for Vegas. Best day of my life.

Stone Gossard:

I think the polarity that is expressed through the media in terms of the differences between the right and the left are exaggerated. People in general love a good fight. I think the science behind global warming is well documented and well proven on smaller scales. Certainly if you add excessive carbon to an enclosed environment – when exposed to sun, it will retain more heat.

On a larger scale, the Earth’s systems are vastly more complex, but are a smaller version of this. Even if there is natural warming as part of the Earth’s own function, if we’re adding to that warming with our excessive carbon, we’re exacerbating the situation.

A common sense approach is by looking at how much industries are putting carbon into the atmosphere. It’s smart money to imagine that this impact is not going to be negligible. We in fact are affecting, if not adding, to an already warming planet.

Jasmin Salas:

Stone,

Do you drive a hybrid or any other kind of energy efficient vehicle? Will any emissions from the upcoming Pearl Jam European tour be offset as well?

Stone Gossard:

Thanks, Jasmin. Beyond bicycling, which is my main mode of transport, I don’t have a hybrid car, but I recently purchased an all-electric Tesla motors EV2 roadster. Combined with the renewable hydroelectricity power it cuts the emissions dramatically. And yes, we include all the European tour emissions as part of our carbon offset portfolio.

Sharin Jacob:

Dear Stone,

How can I get organized within my community (San Diego) to fight ecological destruction? P.S. I saw 5 west coast shows this tour...you guys are amazing!

Stone Gossard:

Thanks, Sharin. I met with my hometown mayor in Seattle and praised him for organizing other mayors around the country to commit their cities to reducing their greenhouse gases to at or below the level called for in the Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change.

So, make sure you’re local mayor has signed on to the declaration, which is now signed by nearly 300 mayors across the nation. Also, you can help identify greenbelts, wetlands, and mangroves in your area to protect and restore. These are great places to store carbon while also protecting and restoring biodiversity, as well as protecting coastal communities against the expected increase in severity and frequency of major hurricanes and storms.

Steven Garcia:

Great 2006 Tour. I was wondering what we as Louisiana Residents can do to help the environment post-Katrina? And when will PJ come visit? We need you!!Rock On!!!

Stone Gossard:

We haven’t sold a lot of tickets in the South lately, so it’s been difficult to organize a tour that gets us there.

My good friend at CI, Michael Totten, has informed me that we’ve lost half the mangroves in the world. These are nature’s fantastic way of protecting coastal environments from storm surges and hurricanes. Looking into wetlands and mangroves in New Orleans would be a great place to start in terms of that particular environment and the natural features that define it.

Eric Lilavois:

First of all, thank you for setting the bar so high, you are an inspiration to us as a band and you have truly helped us dedicate our lives to making a difference. Having said that, how would you recomend that smaller bands such as ours that tour out of a Van and trailer and don't make much of a profit go about making an impact? Is there a realistic way for us to offset our CO2 emissions, etc? P.S, can we go on tour with you? no really, can we? :blink:

Stone Gossard:

Thanks for the kind comments, Eric. Great to hear you’re out there making a difference. If you are traveling in a van and trailer and doing local clubs I suspect your carbon footprint is relatively minimal. Being smaller, it can be acknowledged in full or part at a lower cost, whether by offsetting it through the kinds of groups and actions PJ is doing, or others that you may be aware of locally. Awareness of your emissions footprint is the first step to seeing ways you can take action, even if modest at the outset.

Bryan Cramer:

Do you think albums should be pushed as being sold online as mp3s (to save paper used for packaging) or should bands such as yourselves continue to sell physical CDs so that the artwork is not compromised? Or is there a common ground?

Stone Gossard:

This is a great question. I think it’s one of the compromises we have to make. We as a band love the artwork and the physical package of our CDs. We’ve designed our own packages and poster artwork from the beginning.

At the same time, shipping CDs across the planet requires an enormous amount of energy and therefore releases quite a bit of carbon.

We are moving toward a market where many more people will buy records without the artwork – or the artwork can be displayed online. This is a good point. We certainly are selling a lot more records through iTunes, so some percentage of our fans are getting the record without the artwork.

But we hope to still make it available to those who really want it. It’s a big part of how we hope to present the music.

Paul Romo:

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

Stone Gossard:

No, I wrote a lot of little riffs when I first picked up a guitar. That went away. But my first song in a band was "Come on Down," and I wrote the lyrics and music. That was on the first Green River album, and you can get it through Subpop Records. It was my first ripping off of Iron Maiden.

Tamara:

Hey Stone, I always recycle all of my household waste and use energy efficient light bulbs my only means of transport is by public transport and I do make a point of walking when possible, what other actions do you think I could take to be more energy efficient.

Also I would like to ask if all the band feel as stronly about this as yourself.

Lastly I would like to thank pearl Jam for maintaing such a high standard with your music and making so many people happy.

I shall look forwards to seeing you again at Leeds and Prague.

Take care,

Tamara

Stone Gossard:

CI is a fantastic resource for helping people figure out opportunities to reduce their carbon footprints. Visit www.conservation.org/whatyoucando for a list of ideas, or check out their carbon calculator at www.conservation.org/carboncalculator, which allows you to figure out what your footprint is.

I’ve been leading this strategy in terms of addressing our carbon in the band. The band has been cooperative and excited about learning about our carbon footprint with me. But one of the processes that every business or organization will go through that wants to address this is how to get other people into it and how to express it so that they feel its urgency.

This has been a great experiment for me to learn about the complexity and what some of the issues will be for any individual who tries to motivate their business or organization to address its environmental impact.

It’s not a perfect science and you have to take your opportunities when they come.

andy rigney:

What do you think needs to be done to truely make a difference in the issue of global warming?

Stone Gossard:

Andy, it’s a complex problem requiring many answers at many levels. In the portfolio Pearl Jam assembled we tried to showcase nine different groups, each doing things differently, that we have found taking actions at the local, state, regional, national and international levels, and ranging from shifting to climate-friendly efficiency products, buying green power and biofuels, preventing deforestation, restoring degraded lands to absorb carbon.

This includes not just personal actions, but changing public policies. In our own state of Washington, we are supporting Initiative 937 which will increase renewable energy sources to 15 percent of their supply by 2020.

So we need to support good policies that make it easier for our personal actions and market choices to be climate friendly.

Jocelyn:

Hi Stone.

I saw you thrice this year (the Borgata, Camden and Continental). I will have to find a more energy efficient way of coming to see you guys than the Amtrak and Greyhound route because I'll never miss an opportunity to see you when you're nearby!

I live in an apartment, just started walking 35 blocks to work (and hope to continue doing so weather permitting). What else can I do to make an impact?

I am a teacher so I will also spread the word to the young'uns.

Also, are we, Americans, the worst in terms of energy awareness and efficiency? Which nation is "the best" in terms of energy awareness and efficiency?

Stone Gossard:

You’re already way ahead of the curve walking 35 blocks to work! Congratulations. I think the next place for individuals to make an impact is in their ability to join groups and to organize multiple people’s energies toward specific carbon-related cause.

Join CI Online for these kind of opportunities.

I doubt that we’re the worst in terms of awareness, although I don’t know that to be true. We are not the most inefficient, but we’re the biggest users of energy. We have the most voracious appetite for energy.

But California and New York use 50 percent less energy than the rest of the nation – a combination of higher standards for appliances, buildings, and vehicles as well as incentives from utilities for buying greener appliances. Each household in these states is saving $1,000 a year.

This shows how much room there is to get better nationwide.

Heather Abbott:

Having calculated my footprint,it comes out to $200.00. Is that right? I can erase my footprint by giving $200.00?

It sounds too simple.

Stone Gossard:

Ultimately, that’s the million dollar question. Is there a formula for spending money that allows people to know that they’re having a direct, one-to-one impact on their carbon footprint. That’s the reason why Pearl Jam did a carbon portfolio strategy – because I haven’t felt comfortable with a single answer to this question.

But 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and land-use changes – such as slash-and-burn farming, soil degradation and loss, road building, and urban sprawl.

There’s no perfectly accurate way to put a specific dollar amount on a carbon footprint, but CI is doing fantastic work in terms of keeping carbon in tact, on the ground, and restoring degraded areas that will in the long run absorb lots of carbon.

This is a great place to start. So hell yes, send some more money!

Barrett Coates:

In what ways have you, as a band, contributed positively to the environment in the past?

Stone Gossard:

The very first thing we did as a band was a collaborative effort with Sound Garden, when they were still a band. We worked with Cascade Land Conservancy to protect a piece of land -- some hundred acres or so -- in the Lower Cascade Mountains. It was a piece of land up for a mining contract.

We created a permanent easement so that the land wouldn’t be mined. We had a personal connection to the forest there; some of us had been up there visiting the natural hot sprints and just fell in love with the area. That was back in 1992 – our first large-scale effort to do anything. And it was only $40,000-$50,000 to protect this land.

That was the beginning of what I hope to be a lot more concerted and focused efforts to make a positive impact with some of Pearl Jam’s financial success.

dylan:

Hi Stone

Was the photoshoot for the inside sleeve of the Vs record an environmental statement abut the destruction of forestry/woodland. I always thought it was.

PS thankyou on your imminent return to Ireland, looking forward to seeing the band onstage again, cheers

Stone Gossard:

Jeff Ament was the art director of that particular photo shoot. I’m not exactly sure what he was getting at there. To my mind, it felt like a tribal bonding and communing with nature, but others may have interpreted it differently.

Reuben:

PJ has (unsurprisingly) been at the fore on this issue, setting a laudable example in accounting for its carbon usage. However, a number of environmental critics have lately compared the practice of carbon credits with the practice of indulgences (See John Tierney's recent NYTimes op-ed). Are actions like this still not enough? Do you feel there will be a time that we realize that just holding a large concert is environmentally irresponsible?

Stone Gossard:

Well, that’s a great point and good question.

I think ultimately the article by Tierney and a similar piece in the LA Times are both cynical by their nature and imply that if it isn’t a perfect strategy then they (hypocritically) say it shouldn’t be done. PJ believes we should create as many mechanisms as possible, and enable capital to flow to innovations that are less damaging to the climate and more beneficial to the Earth. And we hope our actions are just the opening salvo to many more demonstrations, proving there are myriad ways to make our actions less impacting on the Earth.

I do believe there is lots of hypocrisy and cynicism out there, and I also recognize that there will be lots of carbon actions offered that may not really work, so it’s critical people scrutinize any actions that are proposed to make sure they are achieving real carbon savings. The bottom line is that climate change is a serious problem, and people can take actions that also drive public policy changes.

Bill Solberg:

Election time is coming up very soon. Are there any resources we can turn to to see which candidates are the best choices in terms of the environment?

Stone Gossard:

You should look for each specific candidate’s position on issues of global warming and the environment. Use your own resources to question and find answers. Pearl Jam’s carbon portfolio also is a great resource. Go to www.pearljam.com

Jen Shatwell, CI Moderator:

Unfortunately, our time with Stone today is coming to an end. I know there are still many questions remaining. I encourage all of our discussion participants to Join CI Online for news and updates about CI’s work with climate change, things you can do in your everyday life to help mitigate climate change, and upcoming CI Live discussions.

Stone, thank you for being with us today and for taking time to answer so many of our questions.

Any parting words?

Stone Gossard:

It’s been a blast, being able to chat with all of you as well as Michael Totten and the folks from CI Online.

CI is a fantastic resource for all things environmental and I applaud their worldwide efforts in doing so much for our small, fragile planet. They are addressing this issue by supporting projects with multiple benefits – they help mitigate climate change while protecting biodiversity and helping communities.

The response has been amazing today, in terms of the number of questions asked. I’m absolutely inspired to do this again at some point. Let’s talk again after I get back from Europe!

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pogal Newbie

pogal

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(NOTE;Sorry if this is a naive question or sounds studpid) I brushed of my led zep 4 album today, and doesn't given to fly sound alot like going to california? Was it a 'remake' or just coincidence.

Ps. this is why the song could never be my favourite pj song.

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