UPDATE: It seems like the band is more of the "rock" genre, than heavy metal.

I hate to be a downer... but I'm pretty sure it takes much more oil to provide the food to provide the energy for the cyclists to power the show than if they just used oil in the first place :-/ The thought is nice... but unfortunately... it's just a though.

I've seen estimates of 10 calories of oil to produce 1 calorie of human food... but I don't know if it's true.

well, it sure isn't any less valid than Earth hour itself, which is really just a vehicle for publicizing the situation. I think it's valid simply because they are not taking the easy way out (like buying offset credits), and in fact really illustrates well the amount of energy required to put on a show....many people have no idea. It's an awesome idea, I hope that it gets a lot of press.

Those aren't realistic criticisms:

1. people are going to exercise anyway; why not utilise exercise equipment to feed the grid, or at least power the gyms energy needs

You may as well say 'don't allow dancing in nightclubs cause then people will eat more food and drink more water'

2. used oil (including used frying oils) has already been proven to work as a biodiesel fuel; there just needs to be collections of it, instead of people pouring it down sinks and drains, and if required some filtering and processing (which overall uses less energy than making vegetable / seed / fruit based oils to begin with)

3. the whole attitude where anything green gets criticised for not being enough has to stop - people need to agree that as long as it isn't greenwashing (ie - unresearched bandwagon-jumping, just for show), then it is already better than the non-eco versions in mass-use;

consider how unecological things have had to get, in order for me to post this comment:

the copper cabling laid in public phone networks, all the ISPs and servers and network equipment required, the change in the economy worldwide whereby personal computers even exist at all and can be puchased in high street stores and malls;

the same goes when it's people writing columns or speaking on TV about 'that isn't green enough' - the whole system that supports their job in the first place is worse than what they critique.

My criticism is not that this isn't green enough or that it isn't positive in that it draws attention to the massive amounts of energy that we use without realizing it.

In both of those respects I like this idea. Doing things with human power that we'd other wise do with oil will demonstrate to anyone how much energy we really use on a daily basis.

For instance... bike to work if you normally ride a car. I work 12 miles from work... and I makee the trip via bicycle 2-3 times a week... it's not easy.

Or try tilling a 100 sq. ft garden with only a pitchfork, hoe and pickax... or perhaps mowing the lawn with a non motorized mower... It gets old pretty quickly...

My criticism is this... it's very easy to assume that there is a one to one ratio of energy savings when we swap an oil driven technology with something else. This is very rarely the case.

As an example take windmill or PV panels... every kilowatt hour produced is that much less produced by coal or oil right? Not quite... it takes massive amounts of energy to produce and impliment such technologies. It could take years to pay back the energy investment for each panel/windmill... much less see a surplus for use in the general public.

How do you think we're making windmills and solar panels anyway... with electricity from solar and wind...? Don't think so.

We need to make sure that when we promote "green" we are really promoting cradle to cradle "green", not window-dressing green.