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...From the day the concert series was announced by former Vice-President Al Gore, Live Earth had to battle doubt and disinterest. The public had grown increasingly jaded over all-star charity rock festivals, particularly two years after the even larger Live 8 benefit shows for Africa and global poverty. (Live 8 organizer Sir Bob Geldof dismissed Gore's effort as "just an enormous pop concert.") And while the organizers claimed to be raising awareness, critics scolded that the global public is well aware of the perils of climate change...
...Even more pertinent was the criticism that the giant carbon footprint of an event that involved jetting pop stars and their entourages around the globe, and encouraging hundreds of thousands of fans to travel to concert sites, was inherently at odds with Live Earth's energy-conservation message. Around half the carbon footprint in any given show usually comes from the audience traveling to the concert, and though Live Earth promised to offset those emissions, it wasn't yet clear how - not to mention that offsets are inherently dicey. The Tokyo show drew much of its electricity from an existing...
...Even some Live Earth organizers admitted the contradiction. "It's very obvious that any event like this is not environmentally friendly," says Yu Nakajima, who was in charge of greening the Tokyo show. "It's probably better not to have an event...
...concerts could reach up to 2 billion people on the Internet - sure, and so could this story - the sheer size and spread of the events meant that for a day at least, climate change (or, the rock concerts it has prompted) dominated headlines across the world. But would the Earth have been better off if we all stayed home and did nothing, literally? "That's a fair thought," Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson told TIME before his band's Tokyo show. "It's also a cynical one." He's right. It's time to get past the obsession over carbon...
...Live Earth's success will be measured not by the number of trees the initiative plants or the number of energy-efficient light-bulbs sold as a result, but by whether it motivates concertgoers to make climate-change their generation's political priority, and press their leaders to act on it. Al Gore and company deserve credit for putting forth a 7-point pledge for concertgoers that includes a demand that countries join an international treaty mandating a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That will only happen if voters reward politicians who fight to cut carbon...