On July 7, millions of people around the world watched or listened to or streamed some or all of the eight “Live Earth” concerts. These concerts, featuring many of the most popular musicians of our time, were intended to draw attention to the issue of global warming.
The concerts were organized by the Alliance for Climate Protection, an organization founded by former U.S. vice
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The mainstream media has focused a great deal of attention on the issue of “hypocrisy” regarding the concerts. Pundits have made fun of the idea of a concert to stop climate change.
The hypocrisy-mongers have also focused on the personal habits of some of the musicians, pointing out their wasteful use of energy resources, such as flying in private jets, driving large cars, living in enormous houses, and so on.
The issue of hypocrisy is an easy way to discredit anyone who wants to speak out about global warming.
By the “hypocrisy” standard, you have no right to be concerned or to take political action about climate change if you personally drive a car, fly in an airplane, or do almost anything else that requires energy.
Applying this standard, there is no one “morally pure” enough to fight global warming.
Being free of “hypocrisy” puts the focus on the personal lifestyles of individuals, while the research shows that a large percentage of carbon emissions come from fossil fuels burned to create energy by power companies.
Of course, a large percentage of emissions also come from vehicle emissions. Even there, it is hard to see how personal lifestyle choices can be enough to reverse the trend to global warming. It’s easy to say, “walk, ride a bike, or take a bus to work.” It’s another thing to be able to do it.
In the United States, a complex web of factors make many people dependent on cars to get to work. Public transportation is generally inadequate. Housing costs have pushed many people to live in neighborhoods far from their jobs. Suburban sprawl also places shopping centers far from homes, with minimal public transit options but massive parking lots.
Even driving a car with lower emissions is fraught with problems outside the control of many individuals. The U.S. government has resisted mandating car manufacturers to lower emissions. Most cars that are more “environmentally friendly” are also newer, more expensive cars. Low-income people who are dependent on cars tend to drive older, higher emission cars.
Regardless, we can’t afford to wait for everyone to have a minimum carbon footprint to begin to fight global warming on the political front.
Concert message
The Live Earth concerts can and should face a serious critique regarding their utility in helping to fight global
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The Live Earth concerts were essentially bourgeois in character.
While ostensibly sponsored by Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, the ACP was “partnered” by many large capitalist enterprises including MSN, Philips, Pepsi and other corporate conglomerates.
Gore himself is a pro-capitalist politician who has only recently become associated with the issue of global warming. The subtext of at least some of the propaganda around the concerts is that it is possible to fight global warming by “buying green” and supporting “green companies.” The use of biofuels is promoted on the ACP’s website as a solution. Click here to read PSL’s critique of biofuels.
Barack Obama used Live Earth to try and shore up his tarnished image on the environment. Last year, he introduced a bill for a liquefied coal program. Coal-to-liquid technology is particularly bad in terms of carbon emissions.
Now, appearing to get on the “climate protection” bus, Obama linked a page to his campaign website featuring the “Live Earth” logo intertwined with his campaign’s logo and a collage of environmental images. Obama also praised Gore as a “bold, prescient leader on climate change.”
Obama used a virtual town hall meeting sponsored by MoveOn.org to promote his campaign promises regarding climate change. The meeting was held in conjunction with Live Earth. Obama called for carbon auctions, which would require businesses that pollute to fund research on alternative energy sources.
Carbon auctions, like emissions trading, are a “free market” approach to regulating emissions. They essentially allow corporate polluters to buy permission to pollute. Other than blowing a lot of hot air, Obama has done nothing to stop global warming. He has yet to rescind his support for the liquefied coal project.
Nothing much political was said at Live Earth, especially not the truth about global warming: that it is caused by carbon emissions, and that carbon emissions have been created by unchecked capitalist industrial development. Drastic reductions in emissions need to be made in the coming years to prevent further climate damage.
However, leaving emissions reductions up to the free market through carbon trading and “buying green” is like letting the fox guard the chicken coop. There is only one country in the world today that meets the criteria for environmentally sustainable development—socialist Cuba.
While centralized socialist economic planning cannot in and of itself guarantee that the environment will be protected, only socialism can remove the profit motive that drives the corporations to dodge serious emissions controls and reductions.
Only socialist planning has the potential to allow society to make its priority that of protecting the environment for this and future generations.
