Some time ago I started a draft post on climate change. I eventually abandoned it because I thought that climate change was so omnipresent in our lives, if you didn’t know about it, you must live in the desert or arctic region — someplace devoid of media coverage.
Well, it seems that someone somewhere thought that a few people were missing the message and some guy I’ve never heard of before now named Kevin Wall got together with Al Gore and voila – Live Earth.
I’ve been tuning in randomly to the show today and I have a few thoughts…
a) Where is all the money for the ticket sales going? I’ve searched high and low on the net for an answer to this question and have still to find an answer.
b) Are the musicians being paid for this gig? Surely they aren’t. Right? Right? It’s a charity gig, right? Probably not.
c) How much energy is each show using? I read that the event is carbon neutral (strangely enough, I couldn’t find that info on the main site – I had to find it on Wikipedia…) here, however, frankly, I don’t buy into it. More of my thoughts on carbon credits in a later post. I did manage to tune in to see Metallica perform in London. Then about 2 hours later Metallica was performing in Hamburg. Germany. Not exactly a car ride away. Yes, I’m trying to say that the band and it’s crew jumped on their plane and flew from one country to another (creating how much co2???) to perform at a Save-the-Planet-Our-World-Is-In-Trouble-Because-Of-Climate-Change concert. Makes no sense to me.
d) How much extra energy is being used by people all over the world, tuning in their tvs and streaming video on their computers, to watch this event? I have to admit we spent more time in front of the TV today just because of this event, than we normally would on a Saturday. Extra energy used on our part. How’s that for being green?
The more that I think about this, the more I’m convinced that some record exec (or maybe even 2 of them) got together and decided they needed to do something REALLY big to give record sales a boost. Let’s remind people of all of the great musical acts we have out there and maybe, just maybe, they’ll download a few extra tracks today or skip out to pick up a CD.
Or how about this for a conspiracy theory…Save Our Selves (SOS – the company that Kevin Wall founded with Al Gore) is going to turn themselves into a brand. And a seal of approval for consumers. My prediction (I’ve never wanted to be wrong so badly before in my life…okay – maybe there was one other time regarding childbirth…) is that SOS will start building themselves up as a brand and you’ll soon be able to buy clothing/everything with the SOS stamp of approval on it. [/insert booming made for radio voice here] “If you see the SOS tag on the product, you’ll know that the product meets X% of a Green Rating and is safe to purchase without any guilt” or “When you purchase products bearing the SOS tag, you know that product was manufactured and brought to market with minimal carbon emissions in the process.” [/end booming made for radio voice here].
And every single one of those products bearing the SOS tag will have paid a licensing fee to SOS for use of their seal of approval.
Where does the money go? How rich do the rich need to be? Please, someone, tell me I’m mis-informed. Tell me for a fact (and substantiate the information with references) that this money is going to develop alternative sources of energy or it’s going towards more windfarms or to make the price of solar panels realistic for the average Jane to buy so she can take her own house off the energy grid. Please, please, please…
Athena's Mind 