Live Aid promoter announces global concerts to tackle climate crisis

Harvey Goldsmith’s Earth Aid Live set to last 10 years and take place across multiple cities and continents, with lineups still to be announced

Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter who backed the London leg of Live Aid as well as numerous other charity events and major gigs, has announced a new multi-year project to benefit action on the climate crisis.

Earth Aid Live will take place in six countries across five continents over one weekend in August 2025, including London, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, with lineups still to be announced. Goldsmith is planning similar events in 2030 and 2035, and will feature concerts in the metaverse as well as real life.

Goldsmith was upbeat as he announced the events, hailing “a new era marked by unity, sustainability, and a profound positive impact on the planet. Building on what we have already achieved with Live Aid, our aspiration is to unite people from all walks of life in the shared mission of bettering our world.”

Written plans for the events state they will “evolve from a traditional fundraising effort”, such as at Live Aid, where funds were raised for NGOs fighting famine in Ethiopia. Earth Aid Live intends to provoke wider climate action in its audiences, spanning “individual action, community engagement, corporate participation and intergovernmental collaboration”. Organisers will “strive” to have “net zero carbon” generated by the events, with “transparent carbon reporting”.

After being approached by organiser Bob Geldof, Goldsmith helped to raise £140m with Live Aid in 1985, and went on to promote concerts for charities including the Prince’s Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust. He has also worked on dozens of other tours, one-off gigs and musical theatre productions, with artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Luciano Pavarotti.

Earth Aid Live is the latest large-scale effort from the entertainment industry to draw attention and fundraising to the climate crisis. In 2007, Goldsmith advised on Live Earth, a global event series organised by Al Gore and entrepreneur Kevin Wall, which featured performers such as Madonna, Kanye West and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Global Citizen festival, an annual event chiefly combatting poverty, has added a climate element to its activism in recent years. Their event Power Our Planet: Live in Paris, in June 2023, featured performances from artists including Lenny Kravitz, Jack Harlow and Billie Eilish – the latter a frequent campaigner for climate awareness. Organisations such as Reverb and the Brian Eno co-founded EarthPercent are also engaged in climate action specifically around the music industry.

While the likes of Coldplay have been praised for their efforts to mitigate the climate impact of international touring, increasing scrutiny is being placed on stars who use private jets, such as Drake, who travels in a large Boeing 767 aircraft.

Taylor Swift is currently under particular scrutiny for her use of private jets: American university student Jack Sweeney tracks the movements of two jets owned by Swift, tweeting their journeys and calculating their emissions, but Swift threatened legal action against him this week, with her lawyers arguing the information created a safety risk.

Cover photo: ‘Our aspiration is to unite people from all walks of life in the shared mission of bettering our world,’ says concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith