Live Earth too fuzzy
Bob Morris @ Jul 10th 2007 12:51 - Category: Climate change
The Telegraph (UK) says Live Earth was underwhelming.
Live Aid and Live 8 worked because they were urgent, emotive, single-issue events aimed at achieving immediate, tangible results. They had an uncomplicated spirit of universal charity that coincides with the entire ethos of popular music, and were run with a haphazard, devil-may-care approach that tapped into rock’s favoured anti-establishment pose. There was a sense of manning the barricades, not preaching from a podium.
When the ANSWER Coalition organizes a major antiwar protest, the groups involved decide on a few unity points and slogans, and these are displayed prominently in leaflets, email, and other such organizing materials, plus displayed on the stage banner at the event. Thus, everyone knows what the political message is, and this gives it focus.
There was no such focus at Live Earth. The message was diffuse and blurry. “End global warming’? Well sure, but how specifically should this be done was not addressed. They missed a huge opportunity to get a serious political message across.
5 Comments »
5 Responses to “Live Earth too fuzzy”
Leave a Reply
Comments subject to deletion at whim of capricious webmaster. Disagreements are ok. Flames, trolls, and right-wing attacks are not. If your comment doesn't appear immediately, then moderation is on, thus there's no need to re-send it.
(However sometimes the anti-spam programs here go awry. Email us if your comments seem to vanish into the void.)
Eli Stephens on 10 Jul 2007 at 5:03 pm #
I think that’s unfair. If you take into account the ads that were run, the literature supposedly given to attendees, and some of the speeches, there was certainly a focus - actions of the individual, e.g., stop buying water in plastic bottles and just refill a refillable bottle. There was even some “larger-scale, non-personal” solutions suggested (in the “pledge”), e.g., vote only for politicians that pledge to do such and such.
Bob Morris on 10 Jul 2007 at 7:20 pm #
Well, we need “oppose all coal plants worldwide” and “mandatory emissions limits” as slogans and goals too. An opportunity was missed, in my opinion, to get a real message out to the planet.
DJ on 10 Jul 2007 at 7:38 pm #
I agree with Bob. Not buying bottled water and avoiding plastic bags are important, but their total impact on the problem as a whole is negligible. Sure we should do these things– but if we send the message that doing them is enough, so don’t buy bottled water and you can feel good about your contribution, well, we here in the West are going to fry.
Bob Morris on 10 Jul 2007 at 7:52 pm #
Like, what if Live Earth had made coal plants a major issue, with a video backdrop of belching coal plants while bands across the planet did music about how coal sucks. Done right, that could have made worldwide headlines.
reader on 10 Jul 2007 at 11:12 pm #
Just a thought here, but I have read some troubling stuff about how Al Gore is acting as a shill for the coal and nuclear lobbies. If this is even remotely true, it might explain why Live Earth did not say anything about coal fired power plants, much less nuclear power (and the massive amounts of toxic waste the it creates).