North Star Writers Group

This Saturday, as one of many events utilizing the calendric alliteration of 07/07/07 for its hook, nine Live Earth concerts arranged by Al Gore for the sake of his global warming fetish will occur in Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, New York, Washington D.C. and Rio De Janeiro. It remains to be seen just how much anybody really notices or cares about this – it would seem that anybody both superstitious and engaged is getting wed that day, so they would all be just a wee bit busy – but Gore is guaranteed to get huge media coverage regardless.

The combination of their sympathetic biases and an otherwise quiet summer holiday weekend will ensure they fill many broadcast hours with his musical propagandizing. It's only too bad they likely won't spend much time asking a few logical questions that naturally arise when looking at this event through the prism of common sense.

• Is it not inherently hypocritical to highlight dangerous energy overuse by having rock stars jet around the world (thus burning up fuel), play music on huge sound stages (that will consume enormous amounts of electricity), which in turn will draw thousands of fans (creating traffic and emissions from thousands of cars and buses)? If global warming is anywhere near as critical as the hysterical tone of Al Gore would suggest, how can they in good conscience not cancel the thing and save all that energy? Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders made the point very well for the French wire service AFP: "It's a bit patronizing for us 21-year-olds to try to start to change the world, especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for [stage] lighting. It'd be a bit hypocritical."

• How exactly will a concert help anything? I'm sure many folks will have a good time listening to some excellent music, but it's essentially preaching to the choir. And once the fans have gone home and the stages are taken down, what will be different? My guess is absolutely nothing. Which means the only practical result of all this will be for Al Gore to stroke his ego. As the Who's Roger Daltrey said to the London Sun, "I can't believe it. Let's burn even more fuel. 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."

• How can Shanghai be included as a concert venue when China is the world's single biggest polluter? China emits more CO2 than the entire developed western world combined. Yet they were exempted from the Kyoto Protocol and now are hosting this. And who knows how much more they're chugging out by building facilities for next summer's Beijing Olympic Games? If Al Gore and the other Live Earth organizers really wanted to make a difference, they'd aim their concert-driven attention at China. But perhaps they know that the only response they'll get from the communist regime is rejection. Thus they try to get the rest of us to ignore that elephant in the room, too.

• Finally, where are the proceeds going? And what kind of direct impact might they have on anyone? No one seems to know. With Live Aid, at least you knew the money was buying food and getting sent to Africa. Sadly, all too much of it never reached starving refugees, getting hijacked by one side or the other in the Ethiopian civil war going on at the time. And far too many who generously gave were either naive, ignorant or both in presuming their money would ultimately translate into people getting fed. But, having said all that, the purpose of the concert and the destination of the proceeds raised were clear. Not so with Live Earth. And I don't expect the mainstream media to be particularly inquisitive about this, though it is their job to do so.

So by all , tune in the show if you like, and enjoy the good music. But don't think for one minute that anything you're observing will have any effect whatsoever on global warming. In fact, the opposite might well be true - the best way to help prevent global warming might be simply to not have ever held the event in the first place.

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