Do Your Part! or: At Least Sing Along
One thing I failed to see during all of these performances and puffery was any compelling call to do anything beyond "take a stand" and "act now for your children and their children" and "it's as simple as changing a light bulb". Hardly seems like a cause worthy of a 24-hour glorified telethon. The truth is, this event had very little to do with global warming (or climate change or whatever the euphemism du jour may be). The claim I heard was that this event was to raise awareness. It's possible that in some remote areas and developing or even non-developing nations they are unaware of the phenomenon known to us as global warming. Of course, those same people probably weren't within a fortnight's journey of a television with cable or satellite service to showcase the event, and even if they saw it, it's doubtful they speak English, and even if by some stretch there are English-speakers who haven't gotten baptized into recycle-reduce-reuse (and close the loop, we can close the loop), they would not have gotten a clear picture of what to do from the Live Earth festivities. Those of us fully aware that Al Gore won an Oscar and who have been getting this message since grade school are far more interested in hearing a gaggle of popular singers and bands of today and yesteryear all on one day than we ever will be about E85.
Is It As Simple As Changing A Light Bulb?
My gut instinct is that changing over to CFL's and hybrid cars in America won't reverse the warming trend or fundamentally change the climate, and I'd be willing to wager if I could interpret the science it would say something similar. Producing less CO2 is hardly substantive given how much we already produce (to say nothing of China and India eaching putting one new coal-fired power plant online every month). Assuming CO2 emissions are the culprit we've been told they are by the TV news (which I will probably rant about again any day now), cutting emissions in half would probably put us back where we were at some point in the middle of the last century which is, as I understand it, still part of the period of problematic emissions buildup. It's like gas prices: they were 2.50 or so for a while then skyrocketed up to 3.50ish and now they are back down around 3.00 even, which seems like a great decrease, but really we're still no better off than we were at this time last year. I'm not a global warming skeptic, I believe there is such a phenomenon. I am, however, increasingly a "global warming can be solved by going green" skeptic. It could just be that I was made a cynic upon the disappointing realization that Captain Planet would never come through on his promises (he was our hero, claimed he was going to take pollution down to zero....lies, a pack of lies, Captain.)
And Now For Something Completely Different...But Not Too Different
Live Earth officially being over (though still being re-transmitted) what does one do now? Go out and recycle plastic shopping bags? Turn the thermostat up to 78? Wait til after 7 to wash clothes? I think it's gotta be bigger than that. Much bigger. Something international and stringent, which could really upset our attempts to "protect our way of life" more than al-Qaeda or any illegal immigrant could ever imagine. The classic Platonic paraphrasing is "necessity is the mother of invention"; In this case, it would appear that there is a very clear necessity, except the generation currently running the country taught us all to live it up, live for today because who still cares what happened yesterday and who knows what tomorrow brings. Well, it appears a substantial majority of climate scientists have a working hypothesis of what tomorrow brings and it doesn't augur well for mankind nevermind civilization as we know it. Nevertheless, we carry on as if nothing will happen. And when the only "necessity" is carpe diem what do we invent?
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