Climate Control Projects Announces Summer 2022 Music Festival SOS: Concert For The Planet and Stateside Launch of EarthPercent

Courtesy Climate Control Projects – SOS
Shepard Fairey designed the logo for SOS: Concert For The Planet, a festival set to debut in summer 2022.

Climate Control Projects, the organization founded in 2020 to work within popular culture to combat climate change, announced a new music festival, SOS: Concert for the Planet, on Wednesday.

SOS: Concert for the Planet will take place in summer 2022, with dates, venue and lineup for the event being unveiled ahead of the U.N.’s 26th annual Climate Change Conference (COP26), which begins Nov. 1.

According to a press release, the festival will include “an intergenerational line-up of artists and speakers, as well as immersive on-site activations and video content produced by Emmy Award winning climate storytellers The Years Project,” and will be carried out sustainably at every turn. The event will be produced in partnership with Mike Luba of AEG Global Touring and Madison House Presents.

Kurt Langer and Perry Serpa, who along with Paul Biedrzycki founded Climate Control Projects, were both involved with the Tibetan Freedom Concerts – Langer as producer, Serpa as PR – and the SOS: Concert for the Planet announcement cites those benefits as a model.

Additionally, EarthPercent, the charity founded in the UK by Brian Eno to raise money within the music industry to support climate action, announced a new U.S. board of directors comprised of Eno, Bruce Lampcov, Dawn Barger, Gillian Bar, Hiroki Shirasuka, Kurt Langer and Tom Wironen.

“Many within the music industry want to do something to address the climate crisis but simply don’t know how, which is why we are working with scientists and experts to identify and fund the most promising solutions,” Eno said in a statement.

EarthPercent will be the official charity partner of SOS: Concert for the Planet.

“SOS is the universal distress signal and the SOS: Concert for the Planet was born out of the music community’s desire – especially among artists – to answer that call,” said Langer, Climate Control Projects’ CEO, in a statement. “Rather than wait on the sidelines for governments and corporations to act, artists are now leading the charge and using their extraordinary public platforms to address the climate emergency.

“The climate crisis is not a future problem, nor is it a far-off problem only felt in places like the Arctic,” Langer continued. “It’s California wildfires. It’s flooded crop fields in Missouri. It’s hurricanes battering Florida and the Carolinas. It’s the loss of fisheries in the Gulf and Pacific Northwest. It’s the Lower 9th Ward. It’s Flint, Michigan. It’s Breezy Point and the Far Rockaways. Climate change is the indiscriminate force that further separates the haves from the have-nots, and, because it disproportionately affects people of color and lower income communities, it is the paramount social, racial and economic justice issue of our time.”

Shepard and Amanda Fairey’s Studio Number One created the logo for the SOS: Concert for the Planet.

“Shepard and I go way back – to Louie’s Diner in the Providence days,” Langer said. “He is one of the rare artists who consistently speaks truth to power through his work, while always remaining culturally on point. Studio Number One embodies this authenticity of voice and the team has created a powerful image to represent the Earth’s distress signal.”