The Steve Miller Band announced yesterday that it has “cancelled all … upcoming tour dates”:
“The combination of extreme heat, unpredictable flooding,
tornadoes, hurricanes and massive forest fires …”
That list certainly seems a smorgasbord of climate crisis fossil-fueled extreme weather events.
The band has assessed the danger
“risks for you our audience, the band and crew unacceptable”
The risk assessment: too dangerous.
And, the band points fingers.
“You can blame it on the weather.”
And, well, here we go again: a failure to connect dots, to name names, and shine a spotlight on the climate crisis (and some of its perhaps unforeseen/considered costs and implications). Did the band fail to go there because of: inability to connect the dots; poor ‘science communication’; fear (note the posting on climate-science denial xTwitter) of vitriolic backlash; and/or, concerns about seeming “political” in ways that could hurt this “classic rock” musician’s popularity and sales in the audience.
As to that fan base, consider this classic climate-science denialism Instagram response to the announcement
“the weather has been the weather since the existence of Earth.
What’s the real reason?”
Well, perhaps news reports of climate-changed enhanced/worsened flooding here, heat waves there, extreme weather everywhere made the travails of touring simply too much for 81-year old Miller. Maybe he just doesn’t want to faint — or, well, have crew or audience members — fainting in the heat or risk their lives to get to an event through flooded streets.
What might be truly newsworthy, btw, here is the cancellation of an entire tour (not a specific event) due to the climate crisis even as the band tells us to “blame it on the weather”.