Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Live Earth in South Africa: A long way from Devon

As if to help stress the importance of reducing, reusing, recycling, the Live Earth line-up for the South African leg of the global jaunt includes, erm, Joss Stone and UB40. Flying in from Devon and Birmingham, of course.

That'll help.

There was a rather good piece in The Times yesterday about the enormous credibility problem Live Earth is building for itself:

Live Earth is also having to field jibes about the embarrassing collusion of at least two of the performers at the New York event in the television advertising of gas-guzzling SUVs. John Legend is featured in a new Lexus commercial, while Sheryl Crow’s hit Everyday Is a Winding Road is helping to sell Sub-aru 4WDs. Such is the level of disquiet felt about Al Gore’s debut as a promoter of music shows that a pressure group in New Zealand, the Climaction coalition, is urging people to protest about it on July 7. In the past, the coalition has accused Gore himself of “greenwashing”.

And they're still planning on doing a gig in Antarctica for no reason other than the stunt value.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even better, one of the corporate sponsors of Live Earth is Chevrolet. Chevrolet still make SUVs (half a dozen models if you go to there web site).

Also: Chevrolet are still part of General Motors. GM still own Hummer. Oh and GMC (obviously). Two companies that specialise in vans/trucks/SUVs.

Unknown said...

are you sure the antarctica idea hasnt been abandoned? their website doesnt include a mention of it. surely, surely, they must have given up on at least that by now. shirley.

Cobardon said...

If people start to question the morality of companies being involved in these greenwashing stunts, and start to hold their idols to account for such blatant hypocrisy, maybe something good will come out of this.

I'm sure no one will mention that the best way of helping the world to combat climate change would be to actually consume less though.

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