Radiohead: In Rainbows, And Out For Global Warming Action

Radiohead is in the news today as it releases its latest album, In Rainbows, on the Web to its fans at any price they're willing to pay. The great experiment in Web promotion isn't the first foray for the band into the blogosphere.

Thom Yorke, the band's enigmatic lead singer, has used the band's blog to sound off periodically about global warming, urging fans to take part in various campaigns -- or to just get riled up.

In April, while the U.K. was considering a climate change law that would limit carbon dioxide emissions, Yorke wrote to fans urging them to support a Friends of the Earth campaign to toughen the measure.

"There is a lot of column inches and internet space and conversation taking place about all this as you know on the subject of climate change," he wrote. "and it all runs the risk of reaching saturation point. except that it is potentially the most terrifying problem the human world has ever had to face."

The attempt at quiet persuasion wasn't necessarily representative of his past remarks, which have occasionally been laced with expletives -- showing, if nothing else, that the man is passionate about the cause.

In November 2005, for instance, he issued a few slurs on the subject of a United Nations meeting on climate change in Montreal.

"if ever property in the country had solar panels or mini wind turbines, just like it has water supply and a satellite dish," he wrote, "perhaps we wouldnt need new nuclear power stations that we cant afford to please these f*ing business leaders."

To read more from Yorke's blog, along with posts about the music and missives from his band mates, click here.

By the way, we can't help but notice that making the band's album available only digitally will inevitably save a whole mess of plastic that would otherwise have gone into the production of CDs and their cases. That little victory, however, is tempered by the fact that the band has refused to allow much of its past catalog to be available digitally, making old CDs the only easy way to hear the music.

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