Will This Weekend's Concertizing Help Cool the Planet?
The plethora of weddings taking place on this coming especially propitious Saturday will be accompanied by music from all seven continents. The Live Earth concerts for a climate crisis will be beamed to 2 billion viewers. Live Earth's master of ceremonies is Al Gore.
Science critic at large Russell Seitz–who last made an appearance in H&R discussing Gore's Venusian meteorology–casts a somewhat gimlet eye on tomorrow's goings-on. To wit:
A little consciousness raising is a dangerous thing. Millions led to fear rising seas by An Inconvenient Truth are beginning to wonder about tomorrow's LiveEarth concerts. Could the coal-fired electrical demand of bands with ten megawatts of stage lighting undo Al Gore's good intentions? Biodiesel is the mantra offered in global response ,but all Green politics is local. It is up to the crowd to offset its own affluent effluence, lest CO2 from sweaty dancing send the fever swamps of the Potomac flooding onto the National Mall like the Lagoon of Venice at high tide.
Whole Seitz post here.
For good or ill, I suspect that Live Earth will have about as much effect on policy as Bono's and Geldof's Live 8 Concerts did. Have a good weekend.