July 2007
The Day After the Night Before
Former US vice-president Al Gore (or "the former next president of the United States" as he prefers), the force behind Live Earth spent the weekend rocking all over the world.
Detractors point out that world CO2 emissions did not nosedive, short haul flights did not cease and most people still probably left their TV sets on standby after watching the concerts. Indeed, even some of the strongest voices in the green lobby have questioned whether we really need Al Gore and a number of highly paid, (private) jet-set rock stars to tell us that our planet is in dire straits. Was hosting a global concert with a not insignificant carbon footprint itself the right way to go about it?
The author feels that the answer must be yes.
Every few months, new scientific, economic and military papers warn of the serious ramifications attributable to our disregard for the environment. Yet after front page headlines for a few days, they appear as no more than a footnote in a world consumed by terrorist threats, Paris Hilton’s release from jail, or devastating climatic events which even some of the more reputable news outlets fail to question as having links to global warming (with a notable broadsheet exception).
Thus, with a global audience of 2billion people, Live Earth was not meant to cure the world’s ills, but to raise awareness in an accessible manner. This is slowly happening, and results from a global poll conducted by the US based Pew Research Centre has shown environmental degradation to be the number one concern of people across the world, even over AIDS or nuclear attacks.
So if a paltry 10% of Live Earth’s global audience took any sort of emission reducing action on the back of the event, and a mere 10% of that figure made a permanent change to their patterns of consumption, that would mean 20 million people are greener today than yesterday. That in itself is a considerable achievement.
But because Live Earth’s impact on such matters can never be measured we must embrace the idea that it has provided a renewed impetus in changing the status quo, much in the way that the Jubilee 2000 campaign achieved with debt relief for the world’s poorest nations.
Launching the campaign’s seven point plan, Gore stated "Live Earth will ask people across the world to commit to changes in their lives and to move other people, communities, companies and governments to reduce our carbon output by 90 percent by 2050." He elucidated further, setting out concrete goals:
- Demand that my country join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth.
- Take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral".
- Fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2.
- Work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation.
- Fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal.
- Plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests.
- Buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crises and building a sustainable, just and prosperous world for the 21st century.
Not the first, and certainly not the last to intone the warning "if we are going to solve this crisis, we have to commit, and we have to do it now", former vice-president Gore was right on target.
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