Live Earth - Hope or Hype

The Live Earth website states "Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis."

When you read the above, or any article on global warming for that matter, it is an assumption that the climate is undergoing some sort of immediate crisis. We are shown data after data suggesting how increasing CO2 levels has raised the earth's temperature which in turned is causing the entire North Pole/South Pole glaciers to melt leading to rising sea levels. All these changes in the earth's atmosphere is also causing destructive weather elements such as widespread flooding, hurricanes and the like. I too, believed that our planet was doomed for destruction by man's greedy exploitation of the earth's natural resources and wanton disregard for the environment.

Many years ago, I read Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear. It changed my perception of the reality of global warming. Although the novel is a work of fiction, Crichton based much of the information in his book on real, actual scientific research and data. The conclusion? What we're experiencing now are normal fluctuations in the earth's atmosphere; throughout earth's history there are periods of warming and cooling. All these has got nothing do with human negligence but rather a result of natural solar activity.

Alarmists, perhaps fueled by political agenda, has turned global warming into a myth and a cause to be championed for. How interesting to note that the organiser of the Live Earth campaign, the Alliance for Climate Protection, was founded by none other than Al Gore. In the weeks leading up to the concerts, the local media too jumped onto the bandwagon. Various b-list celebrities appeared on commercials cooing "We are not exaggerating" while pretending to tear their hair/look serious/act cute. I wonder exactly how many of them actually did any kind of research about global warming first?

Well the concerts are over, the crowds dispersed and the superstars jetted back to their multimillion dollar homes. Different reports have already come in and the results aren't exactly very pretty. Live Earth generated about 74,500 tonnes of CO2 and would require the planting of 100,000 trees to offset the greenhouse effect of the concerts. Not to mention the HUGE amount of fuel and energy wasted, I mean utilised, to stage the concerts.

Having said all that, I'm all for caring for the environment because I firmly believe we all have a responsibility to be good stewards of our planet. But we need to learn to discern myth from fact, especially so when agendas are propogated so often through the media. More on that in the next post.

For further reading, here is an excellent article on the whole Live Earth shebang written by a 19 year-old political science student from Canada.