Live Earth Postmortem
Live Earth and Al Gore’s oil connection
Live Earth could have used a dose of diversity
Live Earth concert opened door to label environmentalists ‘hypocrites’
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Live Earth Carbon Tax: 100,000 Trees
via washingtonpost.com
Excerpt:
It's an inconvenient truth, but mixing rock with recycling is awkward. In a TV interview earlier this week, Matt Bellamy of the band Muse mocked the event as "private jets for climate change."Keep reading at washingtonpost.com
John Buckley of Carbon Footprint, an organization that helps companies reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, said Saturday that Live Earth will produce about 74,500 tons of the gas.
"We would have to plant 100,000 trees to offset the effect of Live Earth," he said, speaking by telephone. But, he added, "if you can reach 2 billion people and raise awareness, that's pretty fantastic."
Certainly, on the way into the show, some of the 65,000 people who'd spent $110 on a ticket appeared unaware of the seven-point pledge that Al Gore, the event's chief impresario, had asked all spectators to make. Asked about it, they offered blank looks and said they were there for Madonna (whose annual carbon footprint, according to Buckley, is 1,018 tons -- about 92 times the 11 tons an average person uses per year).
"I'm not even sure who Gore is," said Georgie Simpson, 35, from Ipswich, in eastern England. "I saw Gore on TV," added Sue Bourner, 38, a health service manager from Hampshire. "But frankly, I think it's cheeky of Americans to come over here and lecture us. They are the worst polluters."
The organizers were determined that the crowd not go away ignorant, however. Big banners asking people to "answer the call" surrounded the stage. And a series of public information films featuring celebrities such as Penelope Cruz urged people to turn thermostats down and carpool while, in between, montages of happy animals were contrasted with pollution-belching power stations.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Al Gore Is A Pusher
Al Gore Lobbied Band to Play Live EarthKeep reading at myway.com
By ERIK SCHELZIG
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - If you saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers whispering to Al Gore when they accepted their Grammy Award for best rock album in February, that's the moment they committed to playing Live Earth.
Gore said he met with band members for more than an hour before this year's televised awards show, trying to persuade them to perform at one of the concerts.
While receptive to the idea, they weren't sure they could fit the July 7 concert into their schedule, Gore said Friday.
"I was pushing and pushing them that no matter how difficult it was, that it was important," he said.
The former vice president, who lost the 2000 presidential election to George Bush despite winning the popular vote, is promoting the Live Earth concerts to raise climate change awareness.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Al Gore Hates People On Life Support
Here's an interesting one from the UK Times. Taking symbolism to a new level, apparently Al Gore wanted to stage a moment of electrical silence during the Live Earth concert. But authorities shot down the idea saying that the flux caused by everyone turning everything back on all at once could be enough to cause electrical malfunctions, possible effecting hospitals. Excerpt:
Britain pulls plug on Al’s big climate change show
Safety fears stop national switch-off
Maurice Chittenden
IT WAS intended to be the symbolic gesture at a global series of rock concerts next month to alert people to climate change. Al Gore, the former US presidential candidate turned climate doomsayer, had wanted a massive switch-off of lights by television audiences, but the National Grid has vetoed the idea.
The inconvenient truth, it says, is that the power surge when people switched their lights back on could cause disruptions in supply and even endanger hospital patients on life support machines.
Live Earth will be a series of concerts, modelled on Live Aid and and Live 8, aimed at raising awareness about the threat from global warming.
As many as 12 concerts across seven continents featuring the likes of Madonna and Genesis and 100 other acts are planned over 24 hours, including one at a research station in Antarctica.
The organisers have so far struggled to find a clear-cut way of conveying their main message. Even rock performers have criticised the concept.
Roger Daltrey, of the Who, said another concert would simply waste fuel; Bob Geldof, who helped to organise Live Aid and Live 8, said people were already aware of the greenhouse effect; while Matt Bellamy, front man of the rock band Muse, labelled it “private jets for climate change”.
Keep reading at timesonline.co.uk
Monday, May 21, 2007
Leonardo DiCaprio On Eco Hypocrisy
Exerpt from The Age. Another great article.
DiCaprio denies eco hypocrisyKeep reading at theage.com.au
Leonardo DiCaprio hit back at charges of hypocrisy as he unveiled, at the Cannes film festival, an eco-documentary he wrote, produced and narrated.
Asked after the premiere of The 11th Hour whether he had taken a fuel-guzzling jet on his way to the French Riviera, the Titanic star spat back sarcastically: "No, I took a train across the Atlantic."
When the British journalist followed up, saying many stars used emission-heavy private jets while touting environmental protection, a testy DiCaprio countered he had taken a commercial flight from New York.
"I try to travel commercial as much as I can," he said.
DiCaprio later came back to the reporter, saying he was irritated with the media for going after prominent environmentalists such as former US vice-president Al Gore (whose own film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, picked up an Oscar this year) for supposed inconsistency in their private lives.
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