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’

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."

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.

Keep reading at washingtonpost.com

Live Earth Click It

Live Earth Causes Next Ice Age - CLICK

Live Earth Stomps On Washington - CLICK

Al Gore On The Defense, Live Earth Proceeds To Fund Presidential Campaign Still Unclear - CLICK

Live Earth Beer: $50 - CLICK

Live Earth Underwhelming - CLICK

Live Earth Leaves Dead Earth

Yup. I'm clearly all out of witticisms.

via Reuters:

Live Earth concerts on Saturday meant to spur action to fight global warming must first tackle another environmental hazard -- mountains of trash and thousands of tons of greenhouse gases caused by the events.

Keep reading at Reuters.com

Chevy Sponsors Live Earth Online Broadcast

GM, one of the planet's worst greenhouse offenders has their Chevy brand name plastered all over the MSN Live Earth website.

Al Gore Is A Pusher

Al Gore Lobbied Band to Play Live Earth
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.

Keep reading at myway.com

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

Live Earth: Useful As A Green Bracelet

This is a reprint from Australia's The Age. I would normally come up with my own witty title for my post, but the article's title is just too perfect. In the wake of (RED) apparently hemorrhaging marketing cash, Live Earth is sure to be the next blunder. Previously I wrote about the monetary and carbon costs of stadium concerts. While concerts are such an integral part of the economy, using them as a venue to spread "global warming awareness" is totally absurd. You seriously have to be retarded to think that there's a single person on the planet that can afford a $99 concert ticket that is not already "informed" about global warming. We are so far beyond an awareness-spreading phase it's absurd. Money needs to go entirely to change. The reality is, change does not occur at the behest of do-gooders. Only governments in conjunction with multi-national corporations can induce global change. This is not a first. When it was discovered in 1976 that the ozone layer was being depleted by CFC aerosols, it took governments and corporations to make necessary changes and it took ten years. Enough rambling. Here's the article:

Live Earth: useful as a green bracelet
May 20, 2007

First, we rocked to feed the world. Then we rocked to raise money to rebuild after the tsunami. Two years ago, the pop stars massed to rock against debt recovery in the Third World. At least, I think that's what Live 8 aimed to do. Not that it made any difference.

And now we're asked to put our hands in the air like we really care about the environment at Live Earth, a multinational phantasmagoric series of stadium concerts on July 7, with the grand aim of "raising awareness of global warming".

Our $99 concert tickets, which I am sure will be printed on recycled paper, do not go towards any concrete measures to halt global warming, or to repair any damage done to the Earth. The proceeds don't go directly to purchasing solar batteries for anyone or subsidising public transport anywhere. The event just goes to raising awareness. And right now?

That's not only a waste of time but a gross indulgence. It's just a green rubber bracelet to string on your arm next to the white rubber band that will magically make poverty history, and the yellow one that cures cancer.

Keep reading at theage.com.au