Fight Climate Change

To help spread the message of climate change issues a series of concerts worldwide are being planned. The Live Earth concerts, launched by Kevin Wall, Al Gore, Pharrell Williams, Maná, Cameron Diaz, and the MSN Network, (The BBC), will take place in South Africa, The UK, The USA, Japan, China, Australia, Japan and Brazil on July 7th (07/07/07) and according to organisers will be “carbon neutral” and attract a worldwide audienced of 2 billion.

Amongst the artists who have agreed to take part in the 24 hours of concerts are Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Paolo Nutini, Sherly Crow, AFI, Snow Patrol, Black Eyed Peas, Duran Duran, Korn and Bloc Party. As ever, with these kind of events, actors, athletes, business men and politicians will be taking to the stage to proclaim their support of fighting climate change.

Whilst, yet again, raising awareness of climate change is definitely not a bad thing, will it actually get the message across as the organisers hope? Will a 24 hour concert fully engage a listening world and goad them into taking action? Will it simply be a case of “well that was a good day of music”, here’s a donation to ease my conscience before hopping in a gas guzzling 4×4 to go and buy the concert DVD and CD?

Although the organisers claim the event will be “carbon neutral”, one does wonder if the carbon that will be used by 2 billion people watching their TVs, people travelling to the concerts (including the bands, who no doubt have clocked up more air miles than most in their careers) and the manufacturing of those countless CDs that the participating bands will sell as a result of their appearences, be fully offset? Still, as Cameron Diaz rightly said at the launch of Live Earth – “Our planet is in danger” – “at least someone is doing something about it”.

Sadly, it does seem that the world requires a bit of a do and singalong, before taking steps to recycle and conserve energy!