The Problem With Live Earth

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:56 AM on July 9, 2007.

This post, written by Bernie Heidkamp, originally appeared on PopPolitics

Normally, we at PopPolitics don't like to feed the beast. The obsession with scantily-clad celebrities reflects a lowest common denominator approach to pop culture.

But having said that, we can't resist beginning a post on the complications and contradictions of today's Live Earth concerts with an image from the front page of Boston.com, Boston Globe's website.

Yes, as the caption indicates, that's Shakira doing her best to combat global warming.

Putting the visual irony aside, the image is very revealing (darn -- couldn't help myself). As Ben Sisario of The New York Times points out, the balance that Live Earth organizers are trying to strike between style and substance is somewhere between difficult and impossible:

Live Earth has already been hit by a predictable series of analytical arrows. Environmental bloggers questioned the need for big, energy-gorging concerts. News reports pointed out that performers would be making trips around the world in exhaust-spewing jets, and that some of them (Kanye West, Sheryl Crow) have songs in S.U.V. commercials.

And the ratio of political effectiveness to celebrity glitz is not always clear. Reebee Garofalo, a professor of media and technology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who has written about music's role in mass movements, noted that many big charity events, like the concerts for Nelson Mandela, had tangible success; Mr. Mandela himself acknowledged the importance of music to the worldwide anti-apartheid movement.

But the event itself will fundamentally be about entertainment. "The people going are going to hear the music," Professor Garofalo said. "So the question then becomes: How do you use that event to promote the growth and expansion of a political movement that involves collective action?"

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail in the UK produces some hard numbers about the carbon footprint of the Live Earth concerts -- as well as recent tours of Live Earth artists.

Starting with American-turned-Londoner Madonna, who is performing at Wembley Stadium today, the article lays out a fairly devastating case against today's spectacle:

For her 2006 World Tour, she flew by private jet, transporting a team of up to 100 technicians and dancers around the globe. Waiting in the garage at home, she has a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, an Audi A8 and a Mini Cooper S.

Indeed, Madonna's carbon footprint is dwarfed only by her ego - she has vowed that she will 'speak to the planet' at Wembley. In fact, an apology might be in order - for the superstar's energy consumption is only the tip of the iceberg in this epic vanity-fest.

The Live Earth event is, in the words of one commentator: "a massive, hypocritical fraud".

For while the organisers' commitment to save the planet is genuine, the very process of putting on such a vast event, with more than 150 performers jetting around the world to appear in concerts from Tokyo to Hamburg, is surely an exercise in hypocrisy on a grand scale.

Matt Bellamy, front man of the rock band Muse, has dubbed it 'private jets for climate change'.

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

In my mind, an even bigger problem than the potential hypocrisy of the event is the focus on individual action to fight climate change and other environmental crises. Too often the message taken from an event like Live Earth is that if we all just recycle more, we can save the planet.

But, of course, it's the corporate and governmental sources of pollution that really matter -- and those only change through institutions, not individuals.

To their credit, organizers of the event like Al Gore and Kevin Wall continually assert that their goal is to use individual awareness to foster larger change. Gore told The New York Times that he wants to "create a critical mass of opinion worldwide that will push the world across a tipping point beyond which political and business and civic leaders across the spectrum will begin offering genuinely meaningful solutions to the climate crisis. I think that's a realistic hope, and it's greatly needed."

We're hoping he's right.

Plus: Yinka Adegoke of Reuters discusses how the Live Earth is harnessing the power of the web in unprecedented ways.

Tagged as: environment, global warming, music, al gore, live earth

Bernie Heidkamp is a Contributing Editor for PopPolitics.