Forgive my skepticism, but will Live Earth actually make a difference?
Sure, everybody had a great time at Live 8. People partied. Music got played. Johnny Borrell swore on the radio. Plenty of people swore back at Johnny Borrell. Generally, A Good Time was had by all, and all went away safe in the knowledge A Good Thing had been done and A Difference had been made.
And what A Difference. One year after the event, the general consensus was Not A Lot had been done. And this year, with the exception of the UK, aid to developing countries goes down: the US by a fifth, Italy by a 10th.
Back in the 80s Live Aid made an impact. It put Ethiopia’s famine on the map and generally felt like Bob and Midge were doing it because nobody else would [1]. Live 8 felt like an excuse to have a party and feel good about yourself without having to do very much or, indeed, change very much.
So, Live Earth. It’s not like people don’t know about climate change, global warming and other such environmental issues, so in that respect its hardly revolutionary.
Chances are everybody will have a good time,lots of Important People will talk very seriously indeed about the issue, Bono will appear onTV being smug [2], some people may even buy an energy-saving light bulb and everybody will feel happy that they’ve done A Good Thing and had a lot of fun.
And the net difference? Apart from a sudden rise in the number of falafel burgers being purchased, not an awful lot, I’d imagine.
UPDATE:
The Spine, it seems, share the same view as Cat in the comments….
As do Justin and John Harris.
Ironic. People like myself who are environmentally-ish friendly think the whole idea’s a big pile of pap.
[1] Then there’s the cynics view: Chumbawumba’s single ‘Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records.’
Surely putting on a dirty great concert will use up a fair amount of the world’s precious resources thus making them all massive hypocrites.
Cat – aside from the fact that it’s allegedly going to be a carbon-neutral event, using up the world’s resources and climate change are two very different problems.
Carbon neutral? Are they going to plant a whole forest?
Seriously, do they just go: “Oh, it’s ok, it’s carbon neutral,” and everybody nods, agrees and doesn’t want to question it because otherwise they’d be criticising Something Officially Good?
Seriously, somebody tell me how a concert that big can be carbon neutral?
No, not until Richard Branson invents his magic carbon-sucking device. Hence “allegedly”.
That said, if they plant something like Redwoods, that have a long lifespan, they wouldn’t have to plant quite so many of them. Probably. Still bollocks though. Unless the tickets are gong to come with a packet of seeds…
1) This whole carbon neutral thing is a big pile of cack. How exactly do you know the exact amount of oxygen that each individual tree in each habitat is going to produce? This leads to gross overestimates of what a tree is capable of producing. On top of this, the slow-growing nature of trees means the planet would be paying the cost of the concert for at least a few decades. As i said, cack.
2) BANDWAGON
3) Perhaps an even more revolutionary idea would be if the artists ivolved in this concert didn’t do any gigs/concerts of their own for seven days. This would use less carbon, and the artists would prove that they really do care about the planet as much as they profess, by letting their gig revenues take a hit.
Utter PC Bollocks. I cannot see how awareness can be raised any further and it is not clear to me how thousands of people piling into carbon emitting cars to listen to some music will make the slightest bit of difference.