The Ugly Truth

Yes folks, while promoting the cause of saving the environment, Live Earth and its participants are...well....killing the planet:

The Live Earth event is, in the words of one commentator: "a massive, hypocritical fraud".

For while the organisers' commitment to save the planet is genuine, the very process of putting on such a vast event, with more than 150 performers jetting around the world to appear in concerts from Tokyo to Hamburg, is surely an exercise in hypocrisy on a grand scale.

Matt Bellamy, front man of the rock band Muse, has dubbed it 'private jets for climate change'.

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts - nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

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, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

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.....

....Let us start with some facts. Worldwide, an audience of around 1,268,500 is expected to attend the concerts - making it one of the largest global events in history.

Dr Andrea Collins, an expert in sustainability from Cardiff University, has researched the impact of such mass gatherings on the environment.

"An event of this size at Wembley - which holds 65,000 at a rock concert, will generate around 59 tonnes of waste," she says. "That is largely composed of the rubbish from food and drink consumption."

She found that a Wembley-sized football match generated an 'ecological footprint' of 3,000 global hectares - an area the size of 4,166 football pitches. This is the amount of bioproductive land required to absorb the C02 emissions produced by such an event.

Here is the most relevant quote:

But Dr Barrett says: "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?"

And it is 100% true. The Guardian, Times of London, and Investor's Business Daily also pile on, while some wonder if Global Warming has Jumped the Shark.

While trying to do what they do best and tell us how to live, Live Earth participants are being exposed as hypocrites, much like their hypocrite-in-chief. Nobody is saying that these celebrities are not entitled to live the "rock and roll lifestyle" because they have for the most part earned their station in life. But for God's sake, don't stand there and become part of this massive global event to preaching climate change to the proles while living your carbon-emitting life of luxury.

And it is no wonder that Gore has had to go on the defensive against the charges of hypocrisy leveled by some musicians, including Live Aid/Live8 organizer and former Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof, British band Arctic Monkeys, and The Who frontman Roger Daltrey.

If these rock stars were truly serious about combating climate change, they would not fly around the world on private jets to concerts designed to fight the pollution they just dumped into the atmosphere. They would be better off starting a charity or an interest group than by doing what they are doing. And if Al Gore were functionally capable of toning down the rhetoric, toning down the hypocrisy, and occasionally tell the truth, maybe some of us would be a little less skeptical of not only his message that global warming is the end of us all, but what his motives actually were....

EDIT: Take that (H/T Instapundit:)

Tomorrow’s Live Earth concerts all over the world are part of Al Gore’s plan to save, well, the Earth. But they could end up generating more carbon dioxide than was produced by all of Afghanistan in 2006.