Won't Get Fooled Again

The Who’s Roger Daltry had plenty of things to say about Al Gore’s Live Earth rock concert to promote global warming awareness; none of it good.

“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.

“Everybody on this planet at the moment, unless they are living in the deepest rainforest in Brazil, knows about climate change.”

[~snip]

Last week the Live Aid hero lashed out, saying: “Why is Gore actually organising them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect?

“Everybody’s known about that problem for years. We are all f***ing conscious of global warming.“

Perhaps a change of name such as ‘Live Hypocrisy’ would be more appropriate. Lets consider some of the damaging byproducts of this fools rock show before anyone touts its benefits:

• Start with between $2 million and $3 million in carbon offsetting, whatever the hell that means.
• The Daily Mail put the waste of such concert tours into perspective:
  

  Madonna herself also has a collection of fuel-guzzling cars, including a Mercedes Maybach, two Range Rovers, Audi A8s and a Mini Cooper S. Yet she will headline the London concert to “combat the climate crisis”.

  “Madonna’s Confessions tour produced 440 tonnes of CO2 in four months of last year. And that was just the flights between the countries, not taking into account the truckloads of equipment needed, the power to stage such a show and the transport of all the thousands of fans getting to the gigs.

  “The Red Hot Chili Peppers produced 220 tonnes of CO2 with their private jet alone over six months on their last world tour which was 42 dates.

  “The average a British person produces is 10 tonnes a year,” said John Buckley, managing director-of CarbonFootprint.com.

None of this mentions the massive amounts of pollution and waste that goes into all the byproducts of these concerts such as food, beer, soda, paper products, cups, condiments, glasses, tee-shirt printing, petroleum based cd’s and dvd’s, cigarettes and other smoke based activities, beach balls, glow sticks, noise pollution, disposable cameras, waste water from the facilities, garbage collection, traffic related fuel consumption and all the electricity used to promote the concert both before, during and after the show.

This is a perfect example of the scientifically challenged morons in the entertainment industry plodding along despite the massive amounts of waste needed to maintain their higher than thou lifestyle. “We’re great, you’re bad, look at us! Buy our records, we help the environment, ish, sort of, well not really. But we are all great!”.

A Live Earth spokesman said: “People are aware of global warming but millions are not doing anything about changing their lifestyles.”

Eat me. How about changing the lifestyles of the entertainments industry first. No? Didn’t think so.

Daltry knows from experience about the potential benefits of these concerts as well as the self promoting scams that ultimately end up doing little for any cause other than promoting the performers. In fact Daltry was a participant in Live8 and admits that there was no discernible benefit to back the claims of the concerts promoters.

the legendary British singer also admitted he feels badly let down by Live 8.

Ten concerts were held simultaneously in July 2005 with the goal to Make Poverty History.

Again Roger complains that unlike the original Live Aid in 1985, where the money went directly to famine relief, the follow-up 20 years later had no achievable aims.

Roger moaned: “What did we really achieve at Live 8? We got loads of platitudes and no action.

“Who were we kidding there?

Exactly. Once again we are confronted with another charity cause that gets ripped off courtesy of liberals in the entertainment industry. Where did all the money go if we are to believe a participant’s assessment of Live8? Did anyone check to see if Air America was one of the promoters?

What this all boils down to is that a bunch of morons are getting together to promote a false political message as well as themselves. That message is coming under increasing attacks by scientists who don’t feel comfortable putting their reputations on the line for the politically motivated junk science. Compound that with the hypocrisy of increasing greenhouse gasses to get out the message of its alleged dangers and you have the makings of the next Dumb and Dumber. The next thing you know these people will have a Live Nuke concert where they blow up a nuclear bomb to draw attention to the dangers of nuclear bombs or a Live Fire concert where they start a wildfire to encourage people to stomp out forest fires! On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d have to say that these people are in negative territory.

But it’s not just rock stars who join in on this kind of climate change hypocrisy. Over 8000 scientists traveled around the world to attend the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. Coincidentally all but 100 of them skipped the carbon footprint meeting according to the Journal Nature Newsblog.

A session yesterday evening about whether the meeting’s ‘carbon footprint’ is justified was not overwhelmingly well attended. In the end, 100 or so people showed up. Well, it was a perfectly fine spring day in Vienna, so no wonder that the meeting had partly shifted outdoors. Hundreds of scientists were busy ‘networking’ in the sunshine all day. Today it’s raining.

Some 8,000 scientists from almost 100 countries are said to be here. Someone has calculated that together they have travelled 15 million kilometres – this is 400 times around the world – to come to Vienna. The planes, trains and cars (only one participant is said to have taken the bicycle) which brought them here have emitted 5,000 tonnes of CO2, roughly the annual emissions of 2,500 EU citizens.

After reading all of this I’d like to hold a ‘Live Shut The Hell Up’ concert. That is one show I’d pay top dollar to attend.

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Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Celebrity, Stageleft, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Big Dog’s Weblog, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Jo’s Cafe, and High Desert Wanderer, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.