Gore Aid?
Tomorrow's Live Earth concerts all over the world are part of Al Gore's plan to save, well, the Earth. But they could end up generating more carbon dioxide than was produced by all of Afghanistan in 2006. Even Bob Geldof and The Who's Roger Daltrey have opted out. By Doug Heye
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Most years, July 7 is notable mostly as the first day of the annual “Running of the Bulls” in Pamplona. Spain. This Saturday, however, as numerologists debate the significance of the date being 07-07-07, many observers will have their eyes focused on former Vice President Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concert series.
The series, billed on its website as “a monumental music event that will…. engage, connect, and inspire individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve the climate crisis” will consist of a total of eight concerts on all seven continents, even a small concert on Antarctica. (A planned concert for Istanbul has been cancelled). More than 100 musical artists, including Alicia Keys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Police, Snoop Dogg, Metallica, Kelly Clarkson, Bon Jovi, Lenny Kravitz and fictitious rockers Spinal Tap are among the featured entertainment. LiveEarth promoters have estimated an audience of two billion viewers.
Before a single note has been played, however, it appears the concert series may leave a larger carbon footprint than its efforts could take away.
First, there are the musicians themselves. While musicians of the level performing at Gore’s concerts might come for free, they do not come cheaply. For the LiveEarth concerts, local airports are expected to be filled with luxury private aircraft - aircraft that have used large quantities of fuel and polluted the skies for the sake of the environment. A single Gulfstream IV jet burns 5,000 pounds of fuel in the first hour of flight and 3,000 pounds of fuel every additional hour, according to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, a U.S. government agency.
Then there are the bands’s equipment - instruments, microphones, lights and the stage itself. A single band alone can require an army of heavy duty trucks to move the equipment. By example, last year’s European tour of legendary rock band, The Who, required 1,000 flight cases to load and unload equipment, which included seventy guitars for guitarist Pete Townshend alone, as well as a six-ton drum kit.
It has been estimated that between the actual concerts, web streaming and television broadcasting, the Live Earth concert series could produce as much as 200,000 metric tons of carbon, after the conversions from electricity have been calculated. In other words, the Gore concerts could produce more carbon dioxide than was produced by all of Afghanistan in 2006.
Gore’s organization, Save Our Selves, has put in place what it calls a “Green Event Standard” for the concerts. Unfortunately, these efforts are either implausible or ineffective, or contain loopholes such as certain measures will be used “where possible.”
Among the Save Our Selves proposals to make the concert environmentally-friendly, taken directly from their website:
* Venue offices, walkways, etc will be retrofitted with compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs, where possible. (Emphasis added)
* SOS staff and artist air travel will be offset through carbon credits.
* Ground travel will be hybrid or other clean fuel where possible. (Emphasis added)
* Hotels will be directed to change light bulbs to CFLs, use nontoxic cleaning products, and have recycling containers present in the rooms.
Apparently, Gore believes the carbon footprint left by jet and automobile fuel and emission, the lighting, sound equipment, sound and stage trucks, artist hospitality, web-streaming, audio and video recording, concessions and everything else that is involved in staging concerts on all seven continents will be offset by directing local hotels to change its light bulbs, use different cleaning products and place recycling containers in rooms and by paying carbon credits and, where possible, changing more light bulbs and ferrying musicians in a Prius.
Indeed, LiveEarth’s own website is filled with such nonsense. One of the benefits for the environment, LiveEarth’s blog states, is that not “all the artists fly in private jets.” Would a musician living in New York City take a private jet to Giants Stadium anyway?
“It is a manufactured get-out-of-enviro-guilt-jail-free card,” said Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute said of the Green Event Standard. “How they can so loudly promote their own elitism is merely further proof thereof,” Horner asked.
Criticism of the possible environmental impact of the Live Earth concerts has not been limited to Washington, D.C. Even some world famous musicians have scoffed at the idea of the Live Earth concerts.
“The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert. I can’t believe it. Let’s burn even more fuel,” Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who and participant in the Live Aid and Live8 concerts for Africa told the British paper, The Sun. “We have problems with global warming, but the questions and the answers are so huge I don’t know what a rock concert’s ever going to do to help.”
The lead singer of the rock band Muse, Matt Bellamy, referred to the musicians’ consumption to participate in the concerts as “private jets for climate change”.
“When we’re using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting… It’d be a bit hypocritical,” Matt Helders, drummer of the popular British band, the Arctic Monkeys told the Agence France-Presse.
Most surprisingly, Bob Geldof, the musician and Nobel Prize nominee who founded the Live Aid and Live8 concerts, singled out Gore in particular, asking, “Why is Gore actually organising them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years.”
Such criticism has not been seen since the late 1980s when Gore and his wife, Tipper, were leaders in the Parents Music Research Center, and organization that advocated warning labels for music with questionable lyrics. In those days, Gore may have been the least popular Democrat in Hollywood.
Looking back at the criticisms the Gores faced, it is startling to see the 180 degree reversal that has been made among the Hollywood royalty since.
Nowhere was this better demonstrated than the Grammy Awards this spring. The former Vice President’s reception, while he served as a presenter and lectured those in the audience about climate change, was a far cry from the late 1980s when Gore was considered a pariah in the music industry.
“I think they love you, man,” rapper and actress Queen Latifah gushed.
The entertainment industry’s affection for Gore reached coronation heights a few weeks later at the Academy Awards. Not only was Gore a prominent and consistent face during the broadcast, which included a predictable tongue-in-cheek, cat-and-mouse game with Hollywood’s current “king of the world,” Leonardo DiCaprio, but the Oscar for Best Documentary went to Gore’s environmental Armageddon propaganda piece, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The Live Earth concerts come at what could be a perfect storm for Gore.
Fresh off his Grammy appearance and Oscar win, Gore has basked in overwhelmingly positive media coverage at a time the announced Democrat candidates for President are attacking each other. He has been free to make his views known, without receiving challenging pushback for the press or political candidates. His current best-selling book, %%AMAZON=1594201226 The Assault on Reason,%% sits atop the bestseller lists. And, perhaps most telling, a poll released June 27 show 32% of New Hampshire Democrat primary voters would switch their support from another Democrat to former Vice President Gore, putting Gore first place in the poll.
Gore’s concert series is sure be a further publicity bonanza as many Democrat voters are torn between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and many left-leaning blogs and online activists find themselves either torn between Obama and former Senator John Edwards, or still wistfully wishing for a Gore candidacy.
The Hollywood coronations at the Grammys and Oscars helped propel Gore into the position he is in now - a potential Presidential frontrunner whose cultivation of liberal bloggers, activists and the netroots send the message to those core constituencies that Gore has not given up on their fight. “Al Gore trains a global army” blared a USA Today headline.
But the Live Earth concerts represent the largest global undertaking of an issue in history and bolster Gore’s drive to appear statesman-like, if not presidential. The timing of the concerts as the newly accelerated primary season is just beginning present Gore as the possible best, last hope the far-left has to erase a victory they feel cheated out of in 2000. With much of Gore’s team remaining uncommitted thus far into the campaign, Gore is the only Democrat who could raise the money and build the organization necessary to win the nomination.
If the mission of the concerts is to improve the environment, the best thing to do may be to cancel the concerts altogether. Of course, the goal of the concerts may have less to do with climate change than with election of the most popular Democrat not on the ballot. Yet.
Political strategist and journalist Doug Heye was recently the press spokesman for Michael Steele’s unsuccessful U. S. Senate campaign. He has also served as communications director for U. S. Senator Richard Burr. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of music.
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24 Comments
fred:Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices.
http://www.eredux.com/states/
Jul 6, 2007 - 9:39 am Jim:Mrs. Jim and I renewed our wedding vows this morning, 07-07-07 at 07:07:07.
http://jimmiehov.blogspot.com/
..
Jul 6, 2007 - 1:21 pm LSD:Gore has demonstrated that he is a great consumer of both energy and hamburgers! The beauty of the deal is that if we do everything we can (a lot of which is meritorious anyways) and then there is no big catastrophy, guess who collects the political capital? It’s all about bloviating sufficiently.
I just hope he fired whoever it was that thought he needed to wear jeans in the last Presidential campaign. Save us!
Jul 6, 2007 - 2:58 pm Jack:Does anyone even know that Al Gore is so conflicted personally that he owns 10% of a hedge fund firm that invests in his global warming propaganda?
Jul 6, 2007 - 4:05 pm Smokey:It’s interesting how carbon — essential to all life — has been demonized by the Gorons.
We are carbon-based life forms. Carbon is essential to our existence. But listening to Fat Albert the Gorebot, you would think that carbon is the same as sodium cyanide.
But Gore is lying about carbon [actually, carbon dioxide; CO2]. In fact, CO2 levels have fluctuated by huge amounts in the past, without having any effect at all on global temperatures.
You can see the total lack of correlation between CO2 and global temperature fluctuations here:
Proof that there is zero correlation between temperature and CO2.
The graph above shows conclusively that Gore has been lying about ‘carbon.’
Jul 6, 2007 - 4:05 pm Over-n-Out:I view the hype and the hoopla surrounding these Live Earth concerts and much ado about nothing. It’s nice to know the concert promoters are going to try to be as ‘green’ as possible but I don’t buy the line about using ‘Carbon Offsets’ to power these concerts. That is a rich person’s way of excusing their environment-unfriendly lifestyle. A carbon offset means that 100% of the fuel is still burned and 100% of the carbon released into the atmosphere - but now the rich person is burning your fuel to stay comfortable while you suffer the consequences of having less fuel to use. Phooey on that. I am skeptical that the organization that Al Gore has set up to collect the funds from these concerts will accomplish anything. Things worked out well with the 8 or so Aid for Africa concerts, right? Poverty, hunger, and disease no longer exist there at the levels seen ten years ago right? I will bet $100 dollars (or 10,000 carbon credits) that we will never get a full accounting of where the money went. In my opinion, anyone who spends a dime on these concerts or contributes to the Live-Earth related ‘charity’ organization instead of spending it on personal energy usage reduction is throwing money down the toilet. Again, it’s nice that the promoters are trying to be ‘green’ with these concerts - let’s hope they continue to do so in the future (fat chance!). One last point as to why I am skeptical about the impact of these concerts is that while the promoters have done everything to use alternate energy sources where possible, the same cannot be said for the broadcast media covering the event. How many megawatts of power does a TV station use per day and how many stations does NBC broadcast on ( I don’t even want to think of the international impact here)? Don’t forget all of the cable channels too, they need power to run repeater stations, satellite operations and other items using traditional ‘non-green’ power sources.
Face it - Live-Earth is a well intended ‘feel-good’ kum-by-ah event - but makes as much sense as holding an ‘Orgy for Virginity’ concert.
Jul 6, 2007 - 7:06 pm blogengeezer:As with all aspiring political leaders, in Europe or the USA especially, Mr gore is free to promise everything. Until the ‘rubber meets the road’ when the annual meeting of ‘The Bilderberg Group’ http://www.crystalinks.com/bilderberg.html
Jul 6, 2007 - 7:50 pm GCA:confronts Mr Gore IF he ever becomes a ‘World Leader’. We have definetly seen this effect with ‘ol ‘W’. Some strange (to the citizens) decisions become policy. The ‘CFR’ and ‘TLC’ have their own ‘pressure points’. Obtain The PBS series ‘COMMANDING HEIGHTS’.
http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/
Gore is a wannabe demagogue, and he just might succeed at it. What better way to indoctrinate people of all ages than give them “star” filled entertainment, make it a HUGE event in and of itself, and simultaneously make its performers and audience alike feel like they are “doing something” to change the world for the better? “Most men [and, I would venture, women] lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them”, to quote Henry David Thoreau. Hence, most people feel powerless in the grand scheme of things. These concerts have nothing to do with saving the earth from “global warming.” They have everything to do with creating a political base of true believers and zealots.
Jul 6, 2007 - 8:35 pm ArmyWife:Let’s not forget about all the other things these concerts will generate. Tickets to get in, even if they use recycled paper you still have to use energy to produce it. Are all the concert goers going to be bussed in? The novelty items for sale, I guess we have to assume that all t-shirts for sale will be made from hemp and all logo’s will of been printed from natural dyes, all of which still need energy to produce. We won’t even start on the trash that will be generated by all these earth friendly people.
Jul 6, 2007 - 9:56 pm Boyd:Off set by carbon credits? What does that mean? You buy credits from a company that’s “green”? How exactly does that offset anything? How does that change the amount of CO2 you just blew into the air? It may help 10 years down the line but, according to Mr. Gore, that will be to late. HMMM… gotta wonder who the major stockholders of these “green” companies are.
A concert in Antarctica?
Mr. Gore, with all due respect, GO PLANT A TREE!
I’m not so sure their actions are all that hypocritical. Surely it is not that unreasonable that people in certain positions (President Bush for example) would produce more pollution in the prosecution of their responsabilities than I would as an ironworker.
What they are is ignorant and selfish. Ignorant to think that any system can be non-polluting and selfish enough to think they are the only one’s entitled to do it.
Jul 7, 2007 - 7:49 am Smokey:For some reason post #5 above didn’t hotlink.
To see the graphic disproving any correlation between CO2 and temperature, cut ‘n’ paste this link:
http://biocab.org/Geological_Timescale_op_927×695.jpg
Jul 7, 2007 - 10:38 am The Fop:If I kill someone, can I offset the loss of life by having a baby?
Jul 7, 2007 - 12:43 pm Dave:The left has always looked for a way to control our lives. Global warming was invented as the ultimate solution, as everything creates carbon dioxide, even life itself, it justifies them controlling everything, even life itself.
Jul 7, 2007 - 3:06 pm ef:I’m thinking of adopting Gore’s model. I propose a massive orgy, for which we will offset the sin with an 80 year old Nun praying the rosary for the duration of the event. Who’s with me?
Jul 7, 2007 - 4:13 pm Mark Dias:Will the God of Global Warming please stand up?
Jul 7, 2007 - 8:02 pm FDNY:I’m disappointed by the above massive ignorance of “offsets” as an economic tool. Each commenter seems not to realize that various types of offset strategies provide the foundation on which our entire economic system is based. Years ago, Wall Street figured out how to monetize environmental impact with offset instruments. Read the WSJ once and a while fer crissakes!
Jul 7, 2007 - 9:28 pm Tony Stark:Those 2 billion hippies’ televisions or streaming video computers will use lots of power as well, and since there is a slight chance that some of those TVs would be turned off if the concert didn’t take place, then we can count that wasted energy against. And while we’re at it, why not count all the time people spent writing, reading and commenting on this blog post as well. I hate that Gore. He thinks he’s so great, but he’s nothing but a tireless public servant, veteran and model American citizen.
Jul 7, 2007 - 9:41 pm JP:Burning some carbon now to educate the masses on how to burn less carbon will result in reductions over time.
And, yeah, I’m burning carbon composing this comment and you are by reading it. That’s undeniable. What matters is that we both turn off the powerstrip when we are done.
Jul 8, 2007 - 12:23 am Buga:so when will Al Gore propose a law for banning human from farting?
Jul 8, 2007 - 2:52 am dutch:It is so very amusing to watch this supposed global warming debate. The last ice age left some 15,000 years ago; so it can be surmised that we have been globally warmed over the past 15,000 years, setting aside relatively shorter periods of global cooling during that time.
Jul 8, 2007 - 8:57 am Lazar:A recent article in “New Scientist” magazine predicted “global cooling” beginning soon based solar activity. It makes sense to me that the sun is the driver of cooling or warming just as it makes sense to me we are warmer than 15,000 years ago. From the early eightees, I can remember how we were blamed for the advent of global cooling.
As soon as the much colder weather arrives, we will put an end to this stupid banter, and then pray for warmer weather.
A quick calculation;
Jul 8, 2007 - 3:27 pm Orion:If the Live Earth audience is 10% of their projected 2 billion, of which 1% reduce their carbon footprint, their average the same as the global average of 4.3 metric tons per person per year, reduced by 5% for one year only, that’s a reduction of 2,000,000,000 x 0.1 x 0.01 x 4.3 x 0.05 x 1 = 430,000 metric tons, compared to the upper estimate of the Live Earth footprint of 200,000, that’s a net reduction of 230,000, using assumptions that are grossly unfair to Live Earth.
the Live Earth organizers intentionally organized the concerts in such a way that a minimum of jets would be used. “In the planning stages, all air travel has been put through a rigorous approval process and trips deemed necessary” are being offset through carbon credits and investments in renewable energy, John Picard, leader of the event’s sustainability team, told the Associated Press.
Additionally, “several staffers are dedicated entirely to helping artists minimize the environmental impact of getting to and playing the shows, and each artist is given a ‘Green Handbook’ of touring tips.” In fact, “this is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever,” according to Gore “The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think, will set the standard for years to come.”
Jul 8, 2007 - 4:46 pm Thunder Pig:I think I need to start selling T-Shirts with “My Carbon-Footprint is Lager Than Yours” on the front with a guarantee to spend a portion of the proceeds will be spent on things that use 2-cycle engines.
Jul 9, 2007 - 2:00 am Byron Yorkie:Turn up the heat, and stop the next ice-age!!!
What a crock-everyone knows that even back to the original “rock festival” Woodstock, there was more energy used in amplification, trucks to drive teh equipment, than used by Chad in 1987. Not even counting all the energy used to produce the LSD! The Gorgons will never tell you that.
Jul 9, 2007 - 11:53 am