I guess that its impossible not to comment on the mega event this weekend that is claimed to be Al Gore's 'opening shot' in an attempt to get the world population to recognise its role in global warming phenomena. After all, it was targeted at a potential audience of 2 billion people and involved eight concerts (in Hamburg, Johannesburg, London, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo) on seven continents (a pity, in terms of coverage that they didn't manage one in Moscow and another in New Delhi?). There has been a great deal of analysis of these concerts in terms of the apparent mismatch between their aims (educating people about the problem) and their mechanics (generating large amounts of carbon dioxide largely by virtue of the transport involved in getting the acts and their audiences to the venues as well as some allegedly dubious links to commercial and political interests). Marina Hyde, for example, produced a very striking piece on some of the 'top acts' involved in the exercise entitled 'The artists formerly known as huge carbon footprints' (http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2120951,00.html ). It is certainly the case that some of these 'pop acts' include some notable consumers of 'world' resources and cynics have noted that performing in such television spectaculars can have very commercially beneficial effects on some participants (in deed, it has been claimed to add 10 years to the lives of some waning acts). Doing the 'gig for free' can be excellent publicity. What I saw of the content did suggest that many of the acts were anglophone US or UK (perhaps partly labelling the event as a US/European concern). Already stories are appearing that some questioned audience members have 'admitted' (shock. horror) that they attended more for the music than the message. It was striking that when the TV cut to the audience, they were often people 'mouthing' the lyrics of the song.
So was it a brave attempt to drive home the message to largely ignorant people or a cynical hijacking of an event for commercial or political gain? I suspect a reason for my reticence before leaping to judgement is that I (like others?) have a bit of the puritan and a bit of the cavalier in my make up. The puritan in me, irrespective of my reservations about some of the messengers and how the message is couched, would like to see humankind start to take responsibility for its impact on 'spaceship Earth', and minimise carbon footprints and other indices of resource exploitation. This might well leave 'room' for other wonderful species to thrive in 'wild' places. The cavalier in me sniffs at the idea that part of the world population will reduce its burgeoning lifestyle whereas another part will agree not to aspire to such a lifestyle in the first place. He also notes that, as humans are programmed to be anthropocentric, they are unlikely to voluntarily reduce population size or even curb future population increases. The cavalier also notes that, without population control, the world would inevitably become a less vibrant place and, sooner or later, wild places and many of the species associated with them, would be squeezed out even without the full horrors of climate change.
So was it a brave attempt to drive home the message to largely ignorant people or a cynical hijacking of an event for commercial or political gain? I suspect a reason for my reticence before leaping to judgement is that I (like others?) have a bit of the puritan and a bit of the cavalier in my make up. The puritan in me, irrespective of my reservations about some of the messengers and how the message is couched, would like to see humankind start to take responsibility for its impact on 'spaceship Earth', and minimise carbon footprints and other indices of resource exploitation. This might well leave 'room' for other wonderful species to thrive in 'wild' places. The cavalier in me sniffs at the idea that part of the world population will reduce its burgeoning lifestyle whereas another part will agree not to aspire to such a lifestyle in the first place. He also notes that, as humans are programmed to be anthropocentric, they are unlikely to voluntarily reduce population size or even curb future population increases. The cavalier also notes that, without population control, the world would inevitably become a less vibrant place and, sooner or later, wild places and many of the species associated with them, would be squeezed out even without the full horrors of climate change.
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