2019 will be remembered as the year the world finally woke up to the climate crisis. Schoolkids took to the streets week after week to demand their futures back. Ordinary people—students, doctors, farmers, grandparents—became activists for the first time. Celebrities got arrested. Politicians waded into televised climate debates—or, pointedly, did not. And the statistics bear out a sea-change in public opinion: climate change is now a key election issue in the UK, with more than 50 percent of voters saying environmental policies will affect how they vote.You might expect the music industry to produce some of the loudest voices in this public debate—pop stars, after all, have been capitalising on save-the-world publicity stunts since John and Yoko did their anti-war "bed-in." But there seems to be a barrier between thought and action when it comes to musicians and the climate crisis. It's striking that only a handful of arena-filling acts (that is, rich folks) have actually pledged to change their behaviour. Last month, Coldplay—yes, Coldplay, but wait—announced that they will be staying at home until they find a way to make touring "not only be sustainable [but] actively beneficial." This is a big, bold statement—not the kind of shirking liberalism that wants to throw money at the problem and hope for the best, but a genuine reckoning with what live music is even for, if it isn't actively beneficial. Not long after Coldplay's statement, Massive Attack announced they'd been working with scientists from the University of Manchester to create a "blueprint" to help bands tour the world without contributing to climate change. Robert Del Naja thinks musicians have "enjoyed a high carbon lifestyle" for long enough. "The challenge now," he said, "is to not only make personal sacrifices, but to insist on the systemic change that's needed."The argument goes that quitting touring is not realistic for smaller acts, who rely on live shows and DJ gigs to support themselves in this era of collapsed record sales and minuscule streaming margins. But with recent reports showing that the world may have already passed a series of tipping points towards runaway climate change—meaning that certain effects of global heating will become unstoppable—we may be forced to move the goalposts on what is considered realistic. At some point, musicians will have to look at ways to sustain their careers that doesn't rely on frequent flying. That may happen if EU countries finally decide to impose a tax on jet fuel. European governments, economists and environmentalists are increasingly calling for flights to be taxed in this way, and putting a levy on kerosene—as many other countries around the world do—would bring in billions of euros to tackle the climate crisis. But it would also bring the EasyJet-set era to a close, in a blow to touring DJs as well as the legions of clubbers who travel to gigs and festivals around Europe every year.As well as doom and gloom, there were small bright spots in 2019. The future of vinyl —a fossil fuel product—was explored by Nick Mulvey of Portico Quartet, who released, a playable record made from recycled ocean plastic. "Playable" is the operative word—if it's possible to produce vinyl without fresh plastic pellets, then the format has a future. Festivals and venues also started to wise up to the waste of single-use plastic, with several events introducing reusable cups—such a tiny, obvious gesture that we should demand the same from every festival in 2020. Musicians are also grappling with climate fear in their records: Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer used field recordings from the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard to make their record; Pessimist and Loop Faction teamed up as Boreal Massif to release a climate-inspired album called We All Have An Impact . The Bio Future Laboratory label explored the sound of the Anthropocene with records by eva01 and Forces. Canadian DJ Jayda G, a qualified environmental scientist, has been organising talks about biodiversity and oceanography to bring climate science to a wider audience.The other hot trend in this year's ever-hotter world was the act of declaring a "climate emergency." The United Kingdom, Pope Francis and most recently the European Parliament have all made statements to that effect, suggesting that they might just follow up with some concrete action. Music itself declared an emergency , though you'd be forgiven for not having noticed. This is all good stuff, but we've completed the "spreading awareness" phase of this challenge now—and that's the easy part. It's time for real action, from all corners of society, and dance music could have a powerful role to play, as I argued in an RA article in July. Clean Scene , a project I cofounded in summer with Eilidh McLaughlin and Fallon MacWilliams, is preparing to trial a carbon offsetting system with a group of booking agencies next spring to explore how climate-positive actions could be embedded in the workings of the dance music industry. We hope that touring DJs and their fans will offset their flights as standard, in a gesture of recognition that our planet is in mortal danger. But offsetting is precisely that—a gesture. It's the equivalent of declaring a climate emergency, an acknowledgement that we must reap what we sow. The brutal fact is that not enough is being done to avert catastrophe. Broadly speaking, it's business as usual out there. A few festivals have made an asset of their sustainable credentials, but until the music industry is carbon neutral, or ideally carbon positive, there is more to be done. It's not about placing blame on those who have to fly for a living, or those who fly twice a year for a holiday—we are all implicated in this high-carbon lifestyle. But it's time to do more. In 2020, it would be inspiring to see DJs, promoters and festivals make a public pledge to reduce their environmental footprint in a serious, meaningful and transparent way.We still have a chance to grab the tiller, but we can't wait and hope that political leaders will do the right thing—especially as climate change deniers and right-wing populists continue their rise to power around the world. Let 2020 be the year we rethink