The Live Earth debate could go on forever, although at the end of the day I think it could be universally agreed that even if a nice idea with good intentions from the ever-green Al Gore, it was completely mismanaged and left itself wide open to criticism from environmentalists, the media and everyday cynics alike. The point that has been milling around my head since last Saturday is, however, with the incredible criticism that I myself was spouting all weekend, we seem to forget that every concert we go to wastes energy. Every single one of the now hundreds of festivals that go on in Britain every summer, let alone the thousands and millions that occur all over the world, waste energy. Obviously I am not excusing the hypocrisy of an event preaching about carbon emissions including many acts whose carbon footprints are 100 if not 1000 times that of an average person. BUT it's very easy to distance ourselves from it and criticise rather than taking a lesson from it, that we should all be paying more attention to events like that, which we all attend whilst taking for granted the damage it will cause to the environment. Those in glass houses etc.
However, as I said, the criticisms for the Live Earth gig are fair and valid, and realistically it probably did much more for the album sales of the artists involved than it did for motivating people to act, in a substantial and sustained way, towards cutting back carbon emissions. The UN I believe were involved in the gigs held in Shanghai, Johannesberg and Rio, as I think these are the places where it was actually important to get the message across to everyday people, as they may not be bombarded with it by the media everyday as we, undeniably, are in the West. Perhaps rallying the people in those countries was significant in trying to spread the message about climate change. However, it is obvious that these countries, particularly in the case of Brazil and China, cannot develop, at least not in the way we have developed, without an inevitable cost to Planet Earth. And unfortunately until we show China another (affordable) way it can try and spread vital resources to its ever increasing population or those foreign investors who are making a pretty penny out of this developing economic superpower start investing their money ethically, and in environmentally friendly methods of energy creation, there is little hope of the message sticking. At the end of the day, Live Earth was a nice idea. When it came to Gore, it probably seemed like the most palatable way of trying to get the message across to the general public. However, what on earth the man was thinking when instead of putting American acts on in their own home towns, he flew them to the UK, and using acts, such as Madonna, who's carbon footprints are frankly incredible (not in a good way of course), is beyond me. Right, with that I will stop. For ranting is boring and any vaguely intelligent human being will have seen straight through the commercialisation of the whole thing to the utter hypocrisy underlying it. I mean, even the Daily Mail saw it.
The next issue of the week I feel was the release of Alastair Campbell's diaries. He is a man who has been incredibly villainised in the press, blamed for the death of Dr David Kelly, accused of creating the entire '45 minutes' fiasco, and generally spinning a great big web of lies to the public for the 6 years he spent as Tony Blair's press secretary. So it was with great interest that I sat down to watch BBC 2's serialisation of his diaries. Expecting to hate the man, somehow I felt myself warming to him (if only ever so slightly) as his diaries had an incredible honesty to them, which I always admire. On reflection the ommissions are much more significant than the events he has included and the section on Diana felt rather frivolous and unimportant - although, what are diaries if not self-indulgent I suppose. He was a man who was as equally hating of others as he was hated, and for whom sleaze was the bread and butter of his working life. But, as he himself has said, he was employed to make the Labour party look good. And this involved telling a lot of porkies. I will stop short of saying I ever felt sorry for the man, he was completely responsible for putting himself in that position. And the question is always going to be, was he wholly unresponsible for the inclusion of the '45 minute' phrase in the Iraq dossier, and whatever the answer, should he have been so quick to scapegoat Kelly in a way that led so tragically to his death? He admits himself he was keen to pass the buck, a spin doctor will always want to place the blame as far as possible from his own doorstep, but was this right? I'm sure the question will plague him for the rest of his life as well.
In other thoughts, where oh where is Gordon Brown? I noticed him once on the news this week with (hurrah!) the announcement that they will have to reasses the issue of Super Casinos, which Tony Blair had been rather overly enamoured with. But apart from that he seems markedly absent. I suppose it is just because I am so used to being party to Tony Blair's every move, with his celebrity status, that it is hard getting used to the media's inattentive attitude towards 'boring Brown'. In a way it is good, but I'd quite like to know what the man's up to. I feel he is planning something big for the Queen's speech. Iraq withdrawal timetable? Let's hope so.
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