I watched the Live Earth concerts this past weekend and am still amazed that people think that these kinds of events can change the world.
There were huge concerts on seven continents. The concerts drew huge crowds and hundreds of millions of viewers on TV and the web. What was the draw? Great music in my opinion.
People have always gone to these events for the performers. In 1986 I went to the Amnesty International concert at Giants Stadium to see the likes of Santana, Peter Gabriel, Bryan Adams, The Police and U2. The point for me and just about everyone there was the music. I have no idea what Amnesty International achieved as a result of those concerts.
Fast forward 21 years and we have these massive concerts going on simultaneously. The point is supposed to be that we need to save the earth from ourselves. Unfortunately, the process of holding these concerts represents a setback in the movement.
The amount of energy used to transport people, equipment and material to these events had to be massive. The amount of energy used to power stage lights, giant LCD screens, stacks of amplifiers, crane assisted cameras and lots more had to be massive.
Lets talk about garbage. Imagine about 350,000 people spending about 12 hours at venues where more than likely everything they consumed had to be bought on site at the venue. Takes a lot of energy to transport and recycle or simply dump that amount of refuse.
How do you think the big performers got to the concerts? Private jets my friends. What kind of CO2 does a small jet powered plane emit into the atmosphere? It can't be good.
So the question is this. Are we willing to trade awareness for a huge negative impact on the environment? How can the success of the awareness campaign be measured relative to the negative impact caused by such a bombastic, energy hogging event?
I'm very sure that the promoters of Live Earth could really give a hoot. Right now they are probably planning their next big worldwide concert event all in the name of an as yet un-named cause celebre to be named later.
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