Friday, June 29, 2007

Live Earth pledge apparently not signed by acts

Earlier today, in the comments section, a contributor suggested that complaining about the air travel involved in Live Earth made you a "moron."

Interestingly, Live Earth have launched a pledge for all of us to sign which suggests that, at least, they're not "morons" in this sense.

Here are two points:

2.To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO2 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become "carbon neutral;"

7.To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Clearly - and coherently - they're calling for people to reduce as much as they can, and offset anything left over. How does that fit with flying Macy Gray to Rio, exactly?

And what businesses who will be flying all these stars around - airlines, presumably - who share a commitment to solving the climate crisis? We've yet to hear of any airline pushing for aviation fuel to be taxed at an equal rate to other types of fuel?


5 comments:

Calvin Jones said...

Earlier today, in the comments section, a contributor suggested that complaining about the air travel involved in Live Earth made you a "moron."

I`d agree with that.

Reducing your personal emissions is a great thing to do, which is why i dont fly, but if we are reaching 2 billion people with a concert then the attitude change and political influence this has is likely to save far more carbon in the future.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

The concert isn't going to "reach 2 billion people" - that's one of those made up numbers which sound impressive but are totally meaningless.

And if the idea is to influence behaviour, wouldn't it be a better idea to do it by example rather than by saying 'don't do as we do, do as we say'.

Chris Brown said...

I don't take the harshest of lines here, and I do think that most if not all of the people involved are doing so with good intentions. But for me there's a difference between, say a documentary crew flying to Africa to film some rare animals so we know what we're going to lose and a bunch of rockstars flying halfway around the world to sing songs that they could sing in their hometowns.

In fairness, for all I know UB40 might be in the middle of a tour of South Africa next week anyway, in which case you obviously wouldn't want to fly them back to the UK - but it's harder to apply that logic to the show on Antarctica.

M.C. Glammer said...

If they're really trying to "raise awareness" of jet effect, why target young pop fans? Flying to Ibiza once a year is not nearly as problematic as all those business execs who fly three times a week on business. But those guys don't like music, certainly not enough to give up a Saturday round of golf to watch the sketchy live coverage that has become the charity gigathon.

Anonymous said...

I haven't heard mention of the carbon-offsets that were purchased for artists having to fly to the concert. Perhaps the writer and fellow commenters were unaware of them?

An individual may also purchase carbon-offsets for their home or car or invest in research for alternative energy sources through half a dozen sources on the Web.

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