Posted by
Jeremy Randolph on Sunday, July 08, 2007 8:57:54 PM
You may have heard the news of our planet's looming crisis and the eminent danger ahead. But not to worry my fellow global citizens. There is hope. Hundreds of the music industry’s most talented and wealthiest have answered the call. In an act of heroism, they have disavowed any further actions on their part that may cause excessive damage to the planet. Lavish SUV’s will be recycled and made into hybrids, fuel sucking private jets will be crushed and made into windmills. Concerts will be postponed indefinitely. So as not to cause citizens to drive to an event that is not absolutely essential to ones survival and, lastly, they will turn their mansions over to the government's housing department to better utilize the 8,000 sq feet.
Naah, I’m just pulling your leg. Instead, they flew their private jets around the world (over 220,000 miles in all) to perform for millions of people that drove or rode trains and buses to the concerts. Then they asked us to crank up the juice to millions of televisions sets and computers so they could loudly proclaim, WE'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING PEOPLE!
So lets assume once again for the sake of peaceful discussion that everything Al Gore would have us believe to be true is exactly as he says. His solution, lower your carbon footprint.
32, that’s right 32. The number of tons of carbon emissions that my family of four produces on an average year. That is according to carbonfootprint.com. What Is a carbon footprint you say? It is the way in which we measure how much of our greedy, overfed, gas guzzling, using too much toilet paper of a life produces carbon emissions or “bad stuff” to further the demise of our planet.
Madonna, on the other hand produces around 1,018 tons, according to John Buckley of carbonfootprint.com. The Live Earth shindig in total produced around 74,000 tons of carbon emissions.
Oh, but they have thought of everything. Live Earth producers claim to be “offsetting” their carbon footprint by planting trees and using other planet friendly modes of operation at each concert venue. However, John Buckley of carbonfootprint.com says "we would have to plant 100,000 trees to offset the effect of Live earth" But, he added, "if you can reach 2 billion people and raise awareness, that's pretty fantastic.".
Climate Group CEO Steve Howard said "I think that this will be very inspiring and show people that you can put on concerts and tours in a much greener way," he said. "I understand concerns about Madonna's carbon footprint. But nobody's perfect, and at least we are now having an interesting debate about it, which will change behavior."
Nobody’s perfect? 1,018 tons of “ the bad stuff” and she gets a “nobody’s perfect” So in doing nothing different than what I was doing on July 6th and according to my carbon footprint, I'm already more planet friendly than most if not all of the Live Earth performers. I better get a bumper sticker.
So this is an acceptable manner of fighting the great crisis of our time. Rather than actually make a net gain in the fight against global warming, you take a net loss in order to simply raise awareness. This is such an easy target it's almost not fair. It's sounds like Al Gore gathered his team and asked , what would Paris Hilton do? The bottom line is, either we're being lied to or the elite hypocrisy is at it’s worst.
What if we applied Live Earth logic to solving the global hunger crisis. Rather than providing food to starving nations, we’ll just have a globally televised buffet featuring sitcom stars and large sacks of U.N. grain. That would certainly “raise awareness”
Imagine if wars were fought that way. Well Mr. President, today we ordered thousands of brave men to fight in a battle in which our defeat was certain. We lost all of them sir. Good news though, we took a few hundred of the bad guys with us and most importantly the media’s all over it and it will probably raise public awareness to the war.
Some might say that it's inappropriate to equate Live Earth with starving children and the lives of our soldiers at war. To that I would say... my point exactly.
Jeremy Randolph