live earth? sad earth.

 

i have nothing against ‘raising awareness’ for a good cause, nor do i not think that the environment is a good cause.  but what i am against is hypocracy.

 

i’d been traveling for two weeks so i’d been out of the current events loop.  so when i switched on to cnn the other day and saw the piece on the live earth concerts, i could hardly believe it.  i mean seriously, jetting stars around the world to hold mega concerts for the sake of the environment.. i don’t think i need to point out what is bleedingly obviously wrong with that sentence.  to be honest, i haven’t looked into what this whole live earth thing is about really, but i doubt the details will devoid my arguments here.

 

i’ve always hated these benefit concerts that are supposed to raise awareness.  in the end, a handful of self-indulgent teens might walk away knowing something that they should have learnt already in school had they paid more attention, and find a way to egocentrically wrap the flag-du-jour around themselves.  the rest of the concert-goers couldn’t care less, but will walk away feeling good about themselves.  and the promoters and the stars (like the shamelessly preachy tax-avoiding fradulent bono – i swear i’m going to punch the next guy who thinks that asshole should be given the nobel peace prize) will feel ever more self-righteous.

 

but doing this to help the environment, that’s going too far, don’t you think?  who, with the ability to purchase a ticket to attend such a concert, has not heard of the need to protect the environment?

 

before al gore’s movie came out, i was all for the kyoto accord, reducing emissions, etc.  but since the whole ‘inconvenient truth’ phenom, public opinion has gone waaaay too far to the extreme.  what’s wrong with that?  plenty, if energy, effort, and money is redirected from much more relevant and needy causes to a bunch of moronic schemes in the name of ‘climate change’ which will, in the long-run, hurt the environment even if they do, technically, reduce emission.  that’s exactly what’s been happening, and that’s exactly what is wrong with these concerts.

 

people are not willing to make real sacrifices, that’s the truly inconvenient truth.  the 3 r’s - reduce, reuse, recycle – are in that order for a reason.  recycling should be the last resort – much of what is thrown in the recycling bin still ends up in the landfill, and what does get recycled takes a considerable energy/water/etc to be recycled.  but recycling makes ppl feel good about themselves while maintaining their spending habits, and that’s why you have ppl taking it up as such a passionate cause, with a ‘fucking recycle, it’s not that hard’ group on facebook, but nothing similar for ‘reduce’ or ‘reuse’.

 

i don’t think that the promoters, in this case, are frauds – i think they genuinely believe in what they are saying.  but maybe that’s what makes this extra tragic.  that the earth has come to a point where a mega self-congratulatory orgy-fest is held in the name of its health is sad enuf; that ppl see nothing wrong with this and that they actually believe that this is what is required to raise the awareness of today’s youths, that’s indeed a sad, sorry state that a songwriter can only aspire to portray.