I'm with Fred on this one - the Live Earth is disgusting and self-serving. As Arctic Monkey drummer Matt Helders said, "Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting. It'd be a bit hypocritical."
The hypocrisy doesn't end there. How many people are going to stay home today in their air conditioning to watch the live telecast on TV? Oh, and did you see all the plastic cups? It's not a free event for raising awareness, it's actually a ticketed event but it's not a fund-raiser either. (Wait, how many tickets did they print? That can't be good either).
These few paragraphs perhaps put it best:
But there’s dissonance, if not hypocrisy, in using a monstrously oversize concert as a vehicle to combat CO2-emission-fueled global warming. (Particularly one that’s being put on at the Meadowlands, which is famously difficult to access by public transportation. I’ll be getting there the same way as most everybody else: by car.)
For starters, there’s the tough-to-take sanctimony of millionaire rock stars who jet around the globe preaching conservation, then act morally superior because they’ve learned to turn off the lights when they leave the room. Though some positive developments may arise from artists’ taking environmental responsibility: When Matthews was recently asked if he might stop touring altogether to lessen his environmental impact, he said: “It may come to that.”
Brit environmental organization CarbonFootprint.com says that Madonna’s Confession Tour produced 440 tons of CO2 in 2006 just with flights between countries, not including what it took to power up each show and transport equipment and people from gig to gig.
Sure sounds like a lot. The Live Earth organizers will undoubtedly be pushing recycling, public transportation, and environmental activism on Saturday. Still, you can’t help but wonder if holding eight stadium concerts around the globe is really the best way for the entertainment world to exercise - or exorcise? - its guilty conscience on the subject of the fragility of the environment.
I mean really. These are the same people who buy carbon offsets to have "no footprint" instead of actually reducing the their footprint by using less. As much as I respect what Gore is trying to do, how about we start by using less than 20 times more electricity than the average household?