Gore’d out of our skulls: Live Earth

So, Al Gore and some of the most bankrollable pop stars of the world joined forces on July 7, 2007 to raise our awareness about climate change.

Oh, and also spew pious platitudes for 24 hours, on TV and streaming video no less.

Al Gore makes us all feel good with his inconvenient truths. 

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And why Live Earth? Because not all hipsters read newspapers. And folks like David Suzuki and Tad Homer Dixon just ain’t hip enough to take seriously, probably because they are too serious.

Okay, at the outset I should say this much: 

It’s a most worthy cause, no bloody doubt. And, yes Virginia, there is such a thing as climate change. 

There, I said it. 

But, forgive me for cringing, and feeling a mite embarrassed, when such luminaries as Madonna, Duran Duran and Phil Collins come to the fore as spokespersons for a such a vital global cause.

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Duran Duran’s frontman Simon Le Bon didn’t travel by jet to Wembley. 

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Thus, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas rappeth unto you: “The world is dying. If people say it’s all right, they’re lying.”

Okay, okay. I know I’m coming off quite cynical, and maybe killing the feel-good buzz.

But I can’t help recalling writer David Rieff’s characterization of Bob Geldof’s Live 8, a couple years ago:

“A grotesque waste of hope.”

Rieff’s qualm with Geldof’s lofty aim and slogan — “End poverty now” — was that it oversimplified very complicated political issues. As if famine and debt relief were problems that could be solved by the stroke of G8 pens.

To my knowledge, the Gore-inspired Live Earth concerts — which took place around the world over the course of July 7 — aren’t prescriptive. The concerts and telecasts seem to be an appeal to hipsters everywhere, urging them to make pledges of a kind, like taking public transit at least once a week.

But, still…

More than once, I’ve wondered what someone from… say, outer Mongolia, Peshawar or [throat-clearing noise] Darfur… would make of our Western proclivity for appointing celebrities as our proxies in any guilt-weighted cause. The Western world, I guess, has the poorest conscience.

Pop concert attendance does not an environmental warrior make.

Indeed, there are celebrities who seem quite savvy, and use their celebrity quite effectively, and in good places. I’m thinking of the Bonos and Clooneys of the world.

But there are also the embarrassments, like that guy from Coldplay. That Coldplay guy described Live 8 as “the greatest thing that’s ever been organized in the history of the world.”

Um, yeah, right.

(Chris Martin. That’s his name. The Coldplay guy. I forgot. Not sure whether that’s due to the band’s surreptitiously sinister somnolence or a subconscious effort to forget Gweneth Paltrow.)

With these cause célèbre concerts, sentimentality always trumps politics. Perhaps because, in the main, politics just isn’t “cool” — at least in the world of mainstream pop music.

But here’s the thing:

Politics is what makes things happen in this world. Alas. And that fact, I’m sure, is something Bono and Clooney know too well.

But, here, in the West, we tend to live virtual lives, to an extent that really is foreign to many parts of this world.

Much is mediated. And we’re encouraged — all over the place — to aspire to the lifestyles of celebrities. We judge celebrities by their reputations, not their actions. So, naturally some might look to them for leadership on issues of the day. 

It’s sad — and kind of absurd — that it takes flash, fantasy and bling to render Western publics widely interested in a cause.

And doesn’t it speak volumes that it took an Oscar award to rehabilitate Al Gore’s cred in the public imagination?

And isn’t it sad that people would want to actually want to listen to Al Gore for an extended period of time. I mean, he sounds so pedantic, almost condescending at times, and pompous to boot.

But that’s okay.

Chilli Peppers fans may know him as the all-knowing giant head on a screen — hero of the environment.

But, to me, Al Gore will always be the lonely, monomaniacal geek who visited South Park on a quest to destroy ManBearPig.

That’s precisely how I choose to remember him.

 

Al Gore:  ‘Really, I’m being totally serial!’ 

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PS: Ah, that felt better. Incidentally, do you know what else happens over the course of 24 hours, and once a week, but with even more gore than Live Earth…?

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