Questions about the “Live Earth” Concert

[Jolie Rouge]

Questions about the “Live Earth” Concert this weekend:

1.) What will be the true source of the power that will power all the lighting, the amplifiers and speakers, the concessions stands? Will it be massive arrays of solar cells?, Hydrogen fusion cells?, Wind Turbines? Ethanol Bio-Fueled generators?

2.) If the latter, who (which company / manufacturer) will supply them and what model No. engine / generators will be used?

3.) Will the food (for the concessions) be cooked on wood fires? Or perhaps they will use dried out cow & horse manure pellets for fuel?

4.) Will they re-use “used toilet paper” in the restrooms (in following what a “Green” labeled performing artist has recently suggested in the media.

5.) How will the performers arrive at the concert areas as well as their Jacuzzi-equipped hotels? Will it be the normal gas-guzzling plush stretch limousines or will they opt for hybrid or Electric vehicles? Maybe they will go all out and pedal a bicycle?

6.) Will the concert tickets & concert programs be printed on the most biodegradable paper available?

7.) Where will all the proceeds as well as all of the financial pledge donations that you and LIVE EARTH are soliciting be distributed to / earmarked for?


Add your own.

Any bets on what the total carbon footprint of the Live Earth concert will be?


See also : http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-information/538327-what-your-effect-global-warming-carbon-footprint-calculator.html?highlight=carbon+footprint


http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-information/542599-having-large-families-eco-crime.html?highlight=carbon+footprint


Will the massive amounts of linens, costumes and other clothing etc. be laundered by hand with biodegradable soap and dried on a clothes line? Or just sent out to the cleaners using high speed washers and dryers?


Will the performers fly in on their personal Lear jets or fly on a commercial airline?


Will only the people that walked/biked/drove in electric cars be allowed into the concert?


Will the beverages be served in biodegradable cups instead of plastic cups and bottles?


What powered the printing devices for the tickets, fliers, posters, and billboards?


What is currently powering the servers running the Live Earth website?


A business man will tell you you have to spend money to make money. But no environmentalist will say “You have to hurt the environment a little to save the environment.” I hope they have a huge carbon offsetting plan in place.


The key to these questions is the last one though, where is the money going?

[Jolie Rouge]

Live Earth adds 9th show to global event
By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago

SYDNEY, Australia - A ninth Live Earth concert was added Friday to the global series of shows highlighting climate change, whose worldwide lineup includes Madonna, Metallica, The Police and Kanye West.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070706/ap_en_mu/music_live_earth;_ylt=AqsRq5_3qT4xpoCVGjqizvCs0NUE

[stresseater]

1.) What will be the true source of the power that will power all the lighting, the amplifiers and speakers, the concessions stands? Will it be massive arrays of solar cells?, Hydrogen fusion cells?, Wind Turbines? Ethanol Bio-Fueled generators? They have 150,000 cattle out back hooked to hoses ready to go.

2.) If the latter, who (which company / manufacturer) will supply them and what model No. engine / generators will be used? Why local farmers of course. You didn't think we'd be trucking them in did you?

3.) Will the food (for the concessions) be cooked on wood fires? Or perhaps they will use dried out cow & horse manure pellets for fuel? You are assuming that we will be cooking food. Surely you know we all eat raw veggies that are harvested humanely.

4.) Will they re-use “used toilet paper” in the restrooms (in following what a “Green” labeled performing artist has recently suggested in the media. If you don't eat real food you don't... well have a need for paper.

5.) How will the performers arrive at the concert areas as well as their Jacuzzi-equipped hotels? Will it be the normal gas-guzzling plush stretch limousines or will they opt for hybrid or Electric vehicles? Maybe they will go all out and pedal a bicycle? Bicycles of course.

6.) Will the concert tickets & concert programs be printed on the most biodegradable paper available? No we will be printing the tickets on the toilet paper we saved from the last treehuggerfest

7.) Where will all the proceeds as well as all of the financial pledge donations that you and LIVE EARTH are soliciting be distributed to / earmarked for?
We will be donating the proceeds to the earth of course. If we can raise enough money we can burn it for heat this winter(properly vented through a micro scrubber of course).


Will the massive amounts of linens, costumes and other clothing etc. be laundered by hand with biodegradable soap and dried on a clothes line? Or just sent out to the cleaners using high speed washers and dryers? We will all be wearing fig leaves as you all should wear too.


Will the performers fly in on their personal Lear jets or fly on a commercial airline? Yes but we are planepooling. Kanya West will fly with Madonna and the kids and Harry Connick Jr said Metallica can ride with him.


Will only the people that walked/biked/drove in electric cars be allowed into the concert? Well we don't have a parking lot.


Will the beverages be served in biodegradable cups instead of plastic cups and bottles? Only water from a well is available but you can BYOD.


What powered the printing devices for the tickets, fliers, posters, and billboards? We have all the hamsters our good friends at PETA liberated on wheels ready to do that hamster thing.

What is currently powering the servers running the Live Earth website? Umm I think AOL is taking care of that end.

A business man will tell you you have to spend money to make money. But no environmentalist will say “You have to hurt the environment a little to save the environment.” I hope they have a huge carbon offsetting plan in place. Our good buddy AL said his people will figure out a way to make it look good. After all they have been able to deflect the people on AL's personal footprint for quite a while now. :) :)

[Jolie Rouge]

7.) Where will all the proceeds as well as all of the financial pledge donations that you and LIVE EARTH are soliciting be distributed to / earmarked for?


To answer number 7 …

Live Earth will send proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit organization chaired by Gore (tickets for the U.S. concert range from $83-$348).

Go figure huh ?

Al Gore, the caring individual. Here is a Millionaire Elitist. During his last year in office he gave a total of $38.00 dollars to charity. This tells more about the man than anything else.

This is the man that banned color paper in the federal government. Stating that color paper cannot be recycled. Then demanded that the government printing office, at a higher cost, stock and print all of his environmental handouts on ‘green’ paper.

He is an elitist, like many liberals, do as I say, not as I do. Take any issue from nuclear power plants to windmills. Liberals are against them for various reasons that have nothing to do with saving the environment. They want us to live in the stone age, while they, the elite, live a life of luxury at our expense.

[Jolie Rouge]

Good news–it looks like Akon didn’t throw anyone from the stage. But this was noteworthy via an account from The Nation: http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070707/cm_thenation/15211690


The Nation -- Approaching the midway point of the Live Earth concert, with the biggest acts still a few hours away, and fans are continuing to stream into Giants Stadium. Max and I, however, have streamed in and then right back out again, after learning that our badges get us into the press tent in the parking lot and not much else. Our quick tour of the stadium concession area led to observations both expected -- $30 t-shirts, $7.00 beers, beefy security guys who wouldn't let us sneak onto the floor -- and unexpected, like the special veggie hot dogs, hamburgers and kabobs; and the compostable brown paper that much of the food came wrapped in.

Recycling stations are everywhere, many of them staffed by volunteers in light blue shirts emblazoned with a Pepsi logo who are there to help people recycle correctly. We spoke to one, Anne, who works as a scientist and recently relocated to New York from Chicago. She signed up for the gig online because she's always "cared about the planet" and wanted to lend a hand however she could. She wants to see more of these mega-concerts-with-a-purpose in the future, maybe one about balancing the budget and another about putting an end to the war in Iraq. We asked Anne whether she thought other volunteers and concertgoers were as concerned as she about the day's political message. She wasn't sure, but was staying optimistic.

Afterwards, we retreated to the press tent to watch a few of the live acts on a projection screen -- Fall Out Boy, Ludacris, Taking Back Sunday, KT Tunstall, and, most memorable thus far if only for sheer presumptuousness, a version of "Gimme Shelter" featuring Keith Urban and Alicia Keyes. An excited MSN press flack informed the assembled media folks that Live Earth was shaping up to be the "largest online entertainment event in the history of online entertainment events," and by midafternoon the MSNBC.com live feed was warning viewers that "Due to the huge number of fans tuning in, the site is a bit slow right now." Press people huddled around speakers and scribbled notes furiously during a brief stage appearance by Al Gore, during which the Live Earth champion promised to keep fighting for a "sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the twenty-first century."

Confined to the media tent, we spent a majority of our time near the press conference stage sitting through a battery of performer interviews. Most answers have been in keeping with the Live Earth script, and the questions rather innocuous: "So, what have you done to make your household green?" Well, Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall added solar panels to her London flat and plans to insulate the walls with wool if you must know. She also tours in busses powered by bio-diesel, but has yet to solve air travel, aside from endorsing Virgin Air and Richard Branson, who's committed the company's profits to global warming research you may remember. Naturally, making touring more eco-friendly appears to be a common plank with artist here. And so does opting to lead by example rather than browbeating your audience.

“Interestingly, Senegalese-American hip-hop artist Akon admitted to not really knowing what “green” was before showing up at Live Earth to perform. But now he knows, and when asked about how important an issue addressing climate crisis is in Senegal or Africa, the rapper deflected the question, alluding to the fact that they may have bigger fish to fry — like poverty, if you’re listening, Mr. Geldof.”

There have been some sour notes to report. First, not every guest at Giants Stadium was here to support the cause. A gatecrasher, in the form of a small airplane pulling a banner, asked the audience not to believe Al Gore and to demand debate at http://www.demanddebate.com (word has it from an anonymous Nation stringer that this airplane was spotted flying over Jacob Riis park in the Rockaways hours before the show -- no word if Cheney has a pilot's license). The second sour note involves one of the short videos they play between artists' sets. The particular one in question involved a close-up of a cattle's ass as it prodigiously produced cow pies. I believe it had something to do with going vegan or becoming a vegetarian, but couldn't keep my eyes on the screen long enough to really read the text.

***

Who are these people and what on earth are they doing?

Why, they are Australian aborigines hopping around half-naked and waving leafy green things to ward off the Eeevils of Modernity! You know–the same Eeevil Modernity that allows you to access photos of the aboriginal performers online, text your friends about it, and videoblog your eco-solidarity with the natives and their concert sponsors. Yes, friends, the global Gore-basm is underway. And there will be no shortage of cultish spectacles like this one to showcase eco-sanctimony.

Sydney kicked things off: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/06/ap3891036.html


The Live Earth global concert series kicked off Saturday with an aboriginal group dancing and singing a traditional welcome at the first venue in Sydney.

Tribal leaders with white-painted bodies and shaking eucalyptus fronds were the first of more than 150 performers at the eight concert, 24-hour series to raise awareness about climate change.

The performance was immediately followed by a video greeting from former Vice President Al Gore, whose campaign to force global warming onto the international political agenda inspired the event.

“Shaking eucalyptus fronds.” A new form of eco-friendly transportation, perhaps?

Jet-setting Madonna, take note.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=466775&in_page_id=1879

[Jolie Rouge]

Australian blogger Tim Blair is keeping tabs on the Sydney concert follies.
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/garrett_silenced/

Live Earth is underway!

Oh cool, the Sydney show opens with an Aborigine set that is strangely moving. And moving strangely, as the stream isn’t… streaming… perfectly.

You can’t miss the symbolism though of having a native culture opening up a spectacle designed to remind us of the harm modern society has visited upon the planet.

And you can’t miss the symbolism of using modern technology to remind us of that harm. Although Live Earth’s technology seems a little clunky:

What appears to be Peter Garret from Midnight Oil is on the massive stadium screen… but we can’t hear a thing he is saying as the sound system took a bit to work out.

Open Choke is into it:

I heard that soooo many politician people have been inspired by what one man, Al Gore, has done for peace and humanity and things like that, that Obama is working on an “Eat for those that Can’t” eating contest to raise awareness of, like, hunger and stuff in Africa or wherever. You know, where people are hungry ‘cause they might not have cars and stuff to get to a store or to a Dennys and stuff. Any way, make sure to watch it on TV! I’m watching it on a big screen and be online with all my friends texting about it. And don’t forget to light your lighter in the cool anthem songs to show solidarity with the people who are getting hot!

UPDATE. Nice numbers:

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists’ and spectators’ travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions ...

Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year.

The concert will also generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste at the concert stadiums - much of which will go directly into landfill sites.


From the same piece, the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Dr John Barrett: “It would be far better for these celebrities to stay at home. Holding large concerts to highlight environmental concerns and cut carbon emissions just seems ridiculous. What planet do these people live on?”

UPDATE II. A spy inside the VIP enclosure at the Sydney show texts:

This concert is carbon neutral my ass!

Plastic cup use is apparently rampant.

UPDATE III. Canada’s Justin Wilson:

i’m all for live earth. it’s a great cause

but i can’t help thinking that maybe musicians aren’t the best medium. there must be some smart ones, but most of them come off as insanely stupid


Yes. Yes, they do.

UPDATE IV. Unhappiness:

The Live Earth concert being held at Sydney’s Aussie Stadium got off to a slow start, with crowds of people leaving the stadium after just a few hours, complaining of long queues and poor acoustics.

Echo Belposos-Ruffo was one of those leaving. The 26-year-old had flown to Sydney from Melbourne to attend the concert with friends.

I’m not sure Echo is fully alert to this whole “carbon footprint” idea.


UPDATE V. Notorious carbon hog Toni Collette addresses her followers:

"Thank you so much, it is heartwarming to see so many people here today in the name of going green, and in the name of very necessary change,’’ Ms Collette said during a break between songs.

"Just by being here today, just by turning up is helping to create awareness of this very life threatening situation.”


Not so, according to Climate Outreach Information Network founder George Marshall:

Live Earth also plays strongly to another powerful denial strategy: the adoption of minimal and tokenistic behaviours as proof of our virtue. One concern is that people will believe that their participation in the concerts is in itself an action against climate change.



One Australian Live Earth supporter pays lip service to going green, but he isn’t giving up red meat anytime soon:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-07-06-live-earth_N.htm



Retired five-time Olympic champion swimmer Ian Thorpe was among the high-profile supporters of the event, though he told an interviewer on Saturday his efforts to help the environment stopped short of becoming a vegetarian.

“I’ve thought about it,” Thorpe said. “But I like steak. I figure that we’ve got to the top of the food chain … and I’m going to enjoy my time now that we’re there.”


Eat, drink, and buy some guilt-assuaging carbon offsets, for tomorrow we shall fry. Or freeze to death. Or whatever eco-apocalpyse is the latest fad this minute…

[Jolie Rouge]

Good thing Mr. Thorpe isn’t in London. PETA has demanded that Live Earth organizers there take meat off the menu:
http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=SX539337P&news_headline=wembley_urged_to_take_meat_off_live_ earth_menu


Organisers of the Live Earth concerts should not sell burgers or hot dogs at the high profile gigs, an animal rights group claimed today.

Peta said that selling meat at a concert for the environment would be like selling cigarettes at an anti-cancer fundraiser because of the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by the meat farming industry.

And Peta activists said that Wembley should take meat off the menu after a recent UN report found that the meat industry creates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined.

Wembley Stadium is set to host the London Live Earth on Saturday, and will see acts including Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duran Duran, Damien Rice, James Blunt, Razorlight and the Pussycat Dolls perform to draw attention to global warming.

The concerts, championed by former US presidential candidate turned green campaigner Al Gore, will take place simultaneously across the globe, with a live audience of one million, and another two billion watching on TV or tuning in on the radio or internet.

However, Peta campaigner Yvonne Taylor said that it would be “hypocritical” if the damage caused by the industry was overlooked at the concert, and said that the group had written to the managing director of Wembley Stadium, Alex Horne, urging him not to sell meat at the event.

She said: “There’s no such thing as a meat eating environmentalist.


No steak for you, eco-celebs! I hear eucalyptus fronds are edible, though…

:rolleyes:


John Berlau, author of Eco-Freaks, watches global warming hysteria jump the shark. http://www.openmarket.org/2007/07/05/live-earth-global-warming-has-jumped-the-shark/

Global warming has “jumped the shark”

This weekend, rock stars will jet around the world, cars and buses will clog traffic, and elaborate sound stages will be set up to burn massive amounts of fuel to send the message to fans at home that they better conserve their energy or face the allegedly dire threat of global warming.

The Live Earth concerts, which start this Saturday, July 7, are also one last chance for Baby Boomers to relive the “flower power” activism of the ’60s. In a recent interview in Rolling Stone, former Vice President Al Gore invoked music icon Bob Dylan to promote the importance of these concerts. Citing Dylan’s ‘60 anthem “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Gore rambled: “What’s the old Bob Dylan line? ‘Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call/Rattle your windows’ - what’s the rest of it? - ‘for the times they are a-changin’.”

But there’s just one problem with invoking Dylan to hype the global warming scare. And that is that Dylan himself has expressed skepticism — to the same magazine — to the notion that global warming is a catastrophe. When he was asked by Rolling Stone founder and publisher Jann Wenner in the magazine’s 40th anniversary issue if he worried about global warming, Dylan replied with an unexpected rejoinder. He asked Wenner, “Where’s the global warming? It’s freezing here.” Wenner, who has blanketed Rolling Stone and his other magazine Men’s Journal with doom-and gloom climate change stories (that often bash CEI), quickly moved on to other topics after he received his comeuppance.

Yet Dylan’s latest statement may signal that in the global warming debate, the times are changing. Even independent-minded celebrities are now questioning the establishment media orthodoxy that the debate over global warming and its effects are all but over. In a phrase familiar to those who study pop culture, it appears that the global warming scare may have “jumped the shark.”

“Jump the shark” refers to the precise moment at which a TV program loses momentum or begins the process of losing the element that made the show popular. The phrase comes specifically from an episode of “Happy Days” in which Fonzie jumps over a shark with water skis. Fans argue that the show became less realistic after that. The web site http://www.JumpTheShark.com is dedicated to fans debating the precise moment their favorite programs “jumped the shark.”

But “jumping the shark” can also refer to a trend or even a line of argument. And as a post on the web site Moonbattery.com has noted, environmentalists’ sky-is-falling global warming rhetoric is jumping the shark because of its inconsistencies and contradictions. Bob Dylan has always been something of an iconoclast and has strayed from the party line more than his liberal fans would like (for a list of examples see the web site RightWingBob.com.) But I think on basic level, it’s hard to convince a man who grew in the bitter cold climate of Hibbing, Minn., that a few degrees of warming over the next century will be that much of a problem.
Other rock stars are questioning the very purpose of the concert. Bob Geldof, who put together the “Live Aid” concerts of the ’80s to combat starvation in Africa, asked: “Why is [Gore] actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? … We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming.”

Similarly, the Who’s Roger Daltrey told the London Sun: “I can’t believe it. Let’s burn even more fuel.” Then, in a rare bit of humility for famous entertainers, Daltrey argued that it’s possible that rock stars may not have all the answers. “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,” he said.

And the latest is from the new band Arctic Monkeys, who expressed skepticism about the concert to the French wire service AFP. “It’s a bit patronizing for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world,” drummer Matt Helders said. “Especially when we’re using enough power for 10 houses just for (stage) lighting. It’d be a bit hypocritical.”

To be sure not all stars are ready to embrace the CEI side of the debate. But acknowledging there are complexities is first step to halting global warming hysteria. What Geldof in particular seemed to realize is that the arguments to stop global are convincing not because warming itself is bad (indeed, there could be many benefits), but of the effects it may cause, such as exacerbating drought and malaria. Whereas Geldof’s Live Aid raised money that directly went to buying food for Africa’s poor (although there were some problems with distribution, as there are in many food aid programs), it’s unclear how the “Live Earth” concerts will improve anyone’s life.

And environmentalists have rejected solutions to the problems they say global warming will worsen. Indeed, as I show in my book Eco-Freaks, environmentalists have created their own public health crises with many of their “solutions.” It was not global warming but the banning of the pesticide DDT — inspired by the hysterics of Gore’s heroine Rachel Carson — that has led to millions dying of malaria in the Third World.

And there is even a question about how seriously environmentalists take the global warming “threat.” After all most eco-groups are opposed to nuclear power, which involves no pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. And they want to shut down the non-polluting dams that provide electricity in the Pacific Northwest, which would result in a sharp increase of the dreaded coal and oil to provide power. These are even bigger hypocrisies than a fuel-burning concert, and provide even more evidence that global warming hysteria is jumping the shark.




Stay tuned for more eco-freak show updates…

[Jolie Rouge]

Question of the day: Whither the Gores’ war on sex, drugs, and rock and roll?

An intriguing question -- Will Tipper be on hand today to join in the whooooooing when Akon dry humps a 12-year-old on stage or does whatever else he’s got planned to advance the culture?


Can anyone explain to me how it is that Gore during his Live Earth Event has the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snoop Dogg and Akon at his event and how his wife Tipper who co-founded the Parents Music Resource Center opposed these types of groups? Not to mention the high profile of Akon slamming a guy at a concert and the incident with the preacher’s daughter in Haiti?


I myself was never a fan of the PMRC but the Goracle seems to have been. “She was early and she was right,” he reportedly told Oprah back in 2000 when asked about Tipper’s crusade.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0040,goldstein,18690,1.html


Ah well. New causes, new friends, I guess.


Good thing they’re leftists or else this would all smell a bit hypocritical.


FYI, here’s number eight on the 'Filthy Fifteen' rocking the carbon out of the atmosphere at Wembley.
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/070707/ids_photos_en/r877255947.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center#Actions

[Jolie Rouge]

Meanwhile, the Beeb’s already had to apologize on the air three times today for foul language. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article2042076.ece

The BBC was forced to apologise four times for bad language, from Phil Collins, Black Eyed Peas, Chris Rock and actor and director Rob Reiner. Cameras cut away from the stage when Rock told a joke about Paris Hilton. Host Jonathan Ross said musicians had been asked not to swear. The BBC had 44 complaints

- Snow Patrol’s green credentials took a dive after they whipped Wembley into a frenzy with their not-so eco-friendly Chasing Cars

- Ricky Gervais was given only 30 seconds to introduce Spinal Tap after famously freezing at last week’s Concert for Diana

- Live Earth is a 24-hour seven-continent series of concerts. More than 2 billion people tuned in to watch

- More than 200,000 people registered for £55 tickets for the concert at Wembley. About 70,000 people attended London’s nine-hour event

- Spoof Seventies rockers Spinal Tap, who reformed especially for the gig, wrote a song entitled Warmer Than Hell

- Madonna’s new song 'Hey You' was inspired by the climate change campaign. The singer and her entourage emitted 444 tons of carbon dioxide on flights during last year’s Confessions tour, more than 40 times the output of the average Briton

-The total carbon footprint of the event worldwide, taking into account the artists’ and spectators’ travel to the concerts and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tons

- The performers in the Antarctic event are Nunatak, a rock group made up of five members of the British Antarctic Survey

- The concerts aim to set a “green example”. At Wembley the burger boxes were made of sugar cane, and used cooking oil will be refined to biodiesel. Carbon emissions are predicted to be 20% less than a gig of the same size

[DBackFan]

I have to say I have been enjoying watching it all though..lol

[Jolie Rouge]

Nah ... we took the kids to the water park and watch "Heartland" live in concert ! Pretty cool.

:beamup

[Jolie Rouge]

Here’s Spinal Tap’s set from Live Earth yesterday at Wembley: “Stonehenge,” then the song they wrote for the occasion, “Warmer Than Hell,” and finally “Big Bottom” featuring every performer in the stadium — including three of the four members of Metallica — on the bass. I looked for a clip that cut out the second song and actually found one, but, appallingly, in order to fit “Stonehenge” and “BB” into a 10-minute YouTube edit, they cut out the part where the dwarves dance around the set piece. You’ll find that here, about halfway through the first clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLd1lz4gLzE&eurl=


In case you missed it in headlines earlier, the peak audience last night in the UK was 4.5 million, less than half what Live 8 pulled two years ago.


Live Earth branded a foul-mouthed flop
By TAHIRA YAQOOB
Last updated at 00:28am on 9th July 2007

Organisers of the global music concert - punctuated by swearing from presenters and performers - had predicted massive viewing figures. But BBC's live afternoon television coverage attracted an average British audience of just 900,000. In the evening, when coverage switched from BBC2 to BBC1, the figure rose to just 2.7million.

And the peak audience, which came when Madonna sang at Wembley, was a dismal 4.5million. Three times as many viewers saw the Princess Diana tribute on the same channel six days before.

Two years ago, Live 8 drew a peak television audience of 9.6million while Live Aid notched 10 million in 1985.

The BBC blamed the poor figures on Saturday's good weather and said its Wimbledon tennis coverage had drawn away afternoon viewers.

Critics said however that the public had simply snubbed what they saw as a hypocritical event.

Musicians including Bob Geldof, Roger Daltrey and the Pet Shop Boys pointed out that a concert highlighting climate change had itself generated huge carbon emissions.

Performers were criticised for flying to concerts that were staged simultaneously on seven continents.

The BBC's coverage, which ran for 15 hours from 12.30pm on Saturday to 4am yesterday, also sparked dozens of complaints about bad language.

The swearing started at 1.30pm when Phil Collins, the first act on in London, used the f-word while singing with his band Genesis.

Razorlight singer Johnny Borrell used the same expletive a few minutes later in one of his songs. And Chris Rock swore while introducing fellow comic Ricky Gervais, who soon followed suit.

The bad language prompted a number of angry postings on BBC messageboards. One viewer wrote: "Why did the BBC transmit this during daytime TV when many children will be watching? Why hasn't an apology been immediately forthcoming?" Another said: "It was disgusting behaviour." Other comments included: "It was pretty bad at that time of day" and "There is a line to be drawn".

A BBC spokesman said: "We asked artists not to swear but sometimes they get carried away. We are very sorry for any offence caused."

The mounds of rubbish left by the 65,000 concert-goers at Wembley further tarnished the event's green credentials. Organisers claimed most of the waste would be sorted and recycled but the Daily Mail saw little evidence of that taking place. The Alliance for Climate Protection event was organised by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president and environmental campaigner.

Other events were held in New Jersey, Tokyo, Hamburg, Sydney, Johannesburg, Shanghai and elsewhere.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=467114&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490

[Jolie Rouge]

Here’s Spinal Tap’s set from Live Earth yesterday at Wembley: “Stonehenge,” then the song they wrote for the occasion, “Warmer Than Hell,” and finally “Big Bottom” featuring every performer in the stadium — including three of the four members of Metallica — on the bass. I looked for a clip that cut out the second song and actually found one, but, appallingly, in order to fit “Stonehenge” and “BB” into a 10-minute YouTube edit, they cut out the part where the dwarves dance around the set piece. You’ll find that here, about halfway through the first clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLd1lz4gLzE&eurl=


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJchUEz9IgE&eurl=


In case you missed it in headlines earlier, the peak audience last night in the UK was 4.5 million, less than half what Live 8 pulled two years ago.


Live Earth branded a foul-mouthed flop
By TAHIRA YAQOOB
Last updated at 00:28am on 9th July 2007

Organisers of the global music concert - punctuated by swearing from presenters and performers - had predicted massive viewing figures. But BBC's live afternoon television coverage attracted an average British audience of just 900,000. In the evening, when coverage switched from BBC2 to BBC1, the figure rose to just 2.7million.

And the peak audience, which came when Madonna sang at Wembley, was a dismal 4.5million. Three times as many viewers saw the Princess Diana tribute on the same channel six days before.

Two years ago, Live 8 drew a peak television audience of 9.6million while Live Aid notched 10 million in 1985.

The BBC blamed the poor figures on Saturday's good weather and said its Wimbledon tennis coverage had drawn away afternoon viewers.

Critics said however that the public had simply snubbed what they saw as a hypocritical event.

Musicians including Bob Geldof, Roger Daltrey and the Pet Shop Boys pointed out that a concert highlighting climate change had itself generated huge carbon emissions.

Performers were criticised for flying to concerts that were staged simultaneously on seven continents.

The BBC's coverage, which ran for 15 hours from 12.30pm on Saturday to 4am yesterday, also sparked dozens of complaints about bad language.

The swearing started at 1.30pm when Phil Collins, the first act on in London, used the f-word while singing with his band Genesis.

Razorlight singer Johnny Borrell used the same expletive a few minutes later in one of his songs. And Chris Rock swore while introducing fellow comic Ricky Gervais, who soon followed suit.

The bad language prompted a number of angry postings on BBC messageboards. One viewer wrote: "Why did the BBC transmit this during daytime TV when many children will be watching? Why hasn't an apology been immediately forthcoming?" Another said: "It was disgusting behaviour." Other comments included: "It was pretty bad at that time of day" and "There is a line to be drawn".

A BBC spokesman said: "We asked artists not to swear but sometimes they get carried away. We are very sorry for any offence caused."

The mounds of rubbish left by the 65,000 concert-goers at Wembley further tarnished the event's green credentials. Organisers claimed most of the waste would be sorted and recycled but the Daily Mail saw little evidence of that taking place. The Alliance for Climate Protection event was organised by Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president and environmental campaigner.

Other events were held in New Jersey, Tokyo, Hamburg, Sydney, Johannesburg, Shanghai and elsewhere.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=467114&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490

[freeby4me]

John Mayer Doesn't Warm to Eco-Questions at Live Earth

John Mayer was eco-friendly onstage – wrapping up Live Earth by jamming with The Police at Giants Stadium on Saturday – but backstage he had some global warnings.

For one, don't ask him about Jessica Simpson.

"I'm going to practice some conversation conservation right now and minimize my bull---- footprint," he told a reporter who asked if Mayer still spoke to Simpson.

Also, don't ask him if he has any "eco-sins" (as many of Live Earth's electricity-using, private-jet-flying rockers readily confessed to).

"What is my eco-sin?" Mayer answered. "I don't know if that is that provocative a question for me. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what my motivation is – what is the positive side to the things that I could do?" He later added: "If you want to peg me as not being entirely eco-friendly, you'll win," though he said, "We have a tour, which is inherently carpooling."

(what is up with that?? If he didnt want to be a part of it then he shouldnt have agreed to sing)

Less confrontational was Kelly Clarkson, who says that while she recycles and carpools, she's still learning the best ways to conserve resources.

"We need just as much information as the audience," she said after her Giants Stadium set. "We're not brilliant. I'm not the most educated on the process, but I'm learning."

Rosario Dawson said backstage that not only is she "that person who turns off the light every time I walk out of a room," but that she'd seriously question dating anybody who isn't green.

"I'd probably have a really huge problem with that," she said.

[LuvBigRip]

What kills me is that they don't even pretend these are "fund raisers" anymore. Back when Live Aid and all the other Artists for Africa thing was going on, they billed these as fund raisers. Most of the millions of dollars raised by those shams never reached the people it was intended for. Now, the say this is to "raise awareness". Uhhhh huhhhh, raise awareness. More like raise a bank balance.

[Jolie Rouge]

Live Earth: Dead on arrival
The global warming concerts were little more than a marketing stunt for aging stars desperate for a stage.
July 10, 2007


'IF YOU WANT to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!" Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. "If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!"

You just can't beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire — who owns nine homes and has a "carbon footprint" nearly 100 times larger than the norm — hectoring a bunch of well-off, aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children? I suppose she could have said, "Now put your right foot in / Take your right foot out / Right foot in / Then you shake it all about…. That's what climate change is all about."

Actually, I think the "Hokey Pokey" makes more sense.

But, hey, I don't want to bash Live Earth, which is not to be confused with Live Aid (1985, dedicated to eradicating African famine) or Live 8 (2005, promising to relieve African nations' debts). So with the African continent so well-fed — and debt free! — who can blame the Celebrity Concern Industry for moving on to its next big success?

The avowed point of Live Earth was to … can you guess? That's right: raise awareness about global warming. Considering the energy required to put on the show, the nine Live Earth concerts doubtlessly raised more CO2 than awareness. NBC's three-hour televised version got trounced by "Cops" and "America's Funniest Home Videos." Moreover, surely most of the people who attended or tuned in already knew about global warming before they saw the video tutorial about Ed Begley Jr.'s eco-friendly home and sanctimony-powered go-cart.

Still, if some rock fans had somehow missed the global warming story entirely, imagine how befuddled they must have felt while listening to Dave Matthews sing the glories of cloth diapers. And, assuming they didn't hit the mute button when Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova came to the stage, one wonders what any climate-change ingenues might have made of her confession. The model, who nearly was killed in Thailand by the 2004 tsunami, explained that she "didn't feel hate toward nature" because of the tsunami. "I felt nature was screaming for help."

It's nice that Nemcova didn't want to blame the messenger, but it's hard to feel a similar reluctance about Live Earth's impresario in chief. Former Vice President Al Gore recently penned a book in which he rails against the current "assault on reason" by the evil forces of Earth-hating right-wingery. He repeatedly invokes science as if it's his exclusive property. But the soft paganism on display in Nemcova's faith-based assertion that a sub-oceanic earthquake was the result of Mother Nature sending us a message is typical of greenhouse gasbaggery.

Gore talks about the dysfunction of political discourse today. But when it comes to global warming, he and his acolytes insist that the time for debate is over. In other words, Gore's ideal discourse would involve only discussion about how best to follow through on his prescriptions.

But such high-minded objections sail over the chief source of Live Earth's lameness. The acts were mostly fine. But the outrage and passion felt so prepackaged you half-expected Ludacris (who rapped about the evils of SUVs) to say "this moral outrage is brought to you by GE's 'Ecomagination.' " Indeed, one could say that Live Earth is proof that global warming has jumped the shark, except for the fact that the phrase "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

Madonna, Genesis, UB40, the Police, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam), Crowded House, Duran Duran — these were among the headliners for this supposedly cutting-edge extravaganza. I listened to these acts in high school more than 20 years ago — and some of them were already going gray by then. Phil Collins and Sting are 56. Cat Stevens is just shy of 60. The Rolling Stones didn't play Live Earth, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was because Mick Jagger needed a hip replacement.

Like the Rolling Stones, who define "graceful retirement" as drags on the oxygen tank between sets, these acts hawk youthful-activism nostalgia for the fans rich enough to pay for it.

Some argue that environmentalism has become a secular religion. Buying carbon offsets, they say, is the modern equivalent of purchasing indulgences for your sins from the Catholic Church. Live Earth certainly fit into that vision. The concerts seemed like Baptist hoedowns of yore, except now Gore is the Billy Sunday for the baby boomer booboisie.

Maybe that's in the works too. But more likely, these were simply concerts by and for people who need to salt their sanctimony with platitudes about raising awareness. The music industry always has played fans for saps. In 1968, Columbia Records peddled the slogan "The Man Can't Bust Our Music!" Now global warming is a brilliant way to market aging rockers too rich and famous to pass as rebels against anything save their refusal to retire with some dignity.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg10jul10,0,3372353.column?coll=la-home-commentary