Why Live Earth Will Fail

Live Earth will do nothing to convince 99% of the people who watch it to take meaningful -- that is, painful -- steps towards reducing the harm their lifestyles are doing to the planet.
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Tomorrow the world will once again be blessed with a world wideconcert featuring the leading concerned citizens of the rock 'n rollworld playing for free (although all the free publicity certainlymakes it worth while) to help educate the rest of the world about thedangers of global warming.

Live Earth certainly is long overdue. In fact, many of the sameprocesses that are at the root of global warming -- thoughtlessconsumption and the wars, exploitation, environmental degradation andthe wholesale violations of the rights of entire peoples -- were alsoat the root of the African famines that 1985's Live Aid concert wereorganized to combat. In the intervening 22 years, however, thesituation for the majority of the world's poor has only gotten worse,not better. And we in the Global North are continuing to consume waybeyond the means of the earth to sustain itself, all the whiletelling the rest of humanity that with enough hard work, World Bankloans and inducements (complete repatriation of profits, lax laborand environmental laws) to Western corporations to invest in theircountries, they too can join the global consumer paradise. We seemalways to forget to mention that if Americans, at six percent of theworld's population, needs to consume about a quarter of its wealthand resources to maintain our standard of living, the idea of therest of the world even approaching our levels of consumption, energyusage and exploitation of land, water, resources and people wouldmean the end of civilization, if not most life on the planet, in avery short period of time.

Two years ago, some of the same people now organizing Life Earthworked with Live Aid originator Bob Geldoff on Live 8. This time thegoal was to raise awareness rather than money about the continuingplight of Africa, in order to get average citizens around the worldto pressure their governments to enact the huge increases in debtrelief, aid, and lowering of our own agricultural subsidies systemswithout which much of Africa will be doomed to sink even further intothe hell of war, ecological disasters, drought and famine in the nearfuture -- particularly as global warming becomes more prevalent acrossthe continent.

I knew then that Live 8 was doomed to fail. And sure enough, a fewmonths ago reports detailing whether governments who signed onto theGleneagles Summit's call for increased aid and debt relief to Africahave lived up to their pledges revealed that almost none have. EvenBono's warning in May that the failure to live up to their promisescould spark violent protests didn't move the G-8, whose leaders intheir May meeting in Germany reminded us by their inaction that theywere never interested in anything more than a photo up with Bono andhis famous friends and maybe a few autographs for the grand-kids.

The reality is that there was no way that Live 8, as Bono argues onthe concert's home page, would give "the poorest of the poor realpolitical muscle for the first time." It is, unfortunately, mostlikely that the only thing that will give the poor muscle in placeslike Nigeria or other resource rich but horrifically corrupt anddespotic states is literally muscle -- that is, powerful mass basedresistance movements, with enough capacity to use violence againstthe corrupt governments and multinational corporations that they willbe forced to share the profits extracted from the territories inwhich they operate with the people who live there.

Of course, the people of the third world understand this all to well.This is why, for example, in Johannesburg, ticket sales for LiveEarth were tepid enough so that the concert had to be scaled backsignificantly. Rio's concert will draw the usual million people; butthat's because Brasilians never pass up an opportunity to party, notbecause anything thinks Live Earth will help stop global warming.Indeed, Brasilians don't need Al Gore or Sting to advise them on theneed to do more about global warming; the country is already in thelead among major CO2 producing countries through its use of locallyproduced ethanol instead of gasoline and other measures.

Even Geldoff has criticized Live Earth for not having a clearlydefined program of action that people could engage in and pressuretheir governments to do the same, a criticism clearly shared by Whofrontman Roger Daltrey, who exclaimed "the last thing the planetneeds is a rock concert." Of course, that didn't stop him andremaining Who member Pete Townsend from doing a few concerts inIreland this past weekend (there was no mention of whether carbonoffsets were bought to cover the energy used to rock the crowd inDublin). Similarly, Live Earth will do nothing to convince 99% of thepeople who watch it to take meaningful -- that is, painful -- stepstowards reducing the harm their lifestyles are doing to the planet.Indeed, for all but the already greenest of us, joining the fightagainst global warming would be a bit like going into the UFC Octagonagainst Quinton Rampage Jackson-who beat reining champion ChuckLiddell in one minute and fifty-three seconds. Except that we're morelike Homer Simpson than Chuck Liddell.

For me, however, the biggest problem with Live Earth is not that itis a concert, or that rich rock stars are once again telling the restof us how to behave. Artists and art more broadly have long beencrucial to successful struggles for social change, and global warmingshould be no different. The problem is that Live Earth is reproducingthe very top down and relatively painless notion of activism thatdoomed Live 8, and is refusing to make clear the obvious linksbetween global warming and the policies of the Bush Administrationand other governments of supporting war and dictatorships to ensureour access to oil. And most important, the organizers of Live Earthhave left the grass roots activists at the forefronts of thestruggles against global warming and environmental devastation morebroadly, especially in the developing world, out of the conversationwhen in fact they should be leading it.

The most glaring evidence of this comes from the concert that wasproposed, and then canceled, for Istanbul. As soon as I heard aboutLive Earth I contacted the producers to urge them to include thepeople of the Middle East and larger Muslim world in the concertplanning. After all, the strategically most important location forpetroleum extraction is the Middle East, and the entire foreignpolicy system of the US for more than half a century has been geared,largely, towards preserving our control and/or management of the mostimportant reserves in the region. The "military industrial complex"that President Eisenhower warned about half a century ago -- whichtoday is more properly called the "arms-petrodollar complex" -- hasbeen the primary planner, executor and beneficiary of US MiddleEastern policy since that time, from supporting some of the mostcorrupt, autocratic and violent regimes in the world, to invadingIraq, all for the sake of maintaining an "American way oflife" -- exemplified by President Bush's exhortation after 9/11 forAmericans to "go shopping" which is literally poisoning the planet todeath.

From my frequent travels to the the Middle East I have become away ofthe strong if little discussed environmental movements who havesprung up with civil society's development across the region. Moreimportant, if the Middle East is at the center of the problem ofglobal warming, it stands to reason that it should be part of theconversation about the solution, especially since the impact ofglobal warming, particularly as regards increased desertification,will hit the countries of the region harder than almost anywhere elseon earth.

I told them about the vibrant and growing rock, metal and hip hopscenes across the Muslim world, many of which are quite political,and whose members have already begun taking on issues related to LiveEarth. I even put them in touch with an amazing array ofenvironmental activists in Turkey who are at the forefront of theglobal warming movement in the country, and have put on hugefestivals in the last few years bringing tens of thousands of peopletogether, all in a spirit of DIY grassroots activism. They werealready planning a concert on July 7 and were happy to work with LiveEarth to bring in bands from around the Muslim world to make it atruly global affair (as far as I can tell, apart from a last minuteaddition of Yusuf Islam to the Hamburg show, there is not a singleartist from the Middle East or North Africa performing at any of theconcerts, although I can't be sure because not all the lists ofperformers has been made public).

But it was clear that this was not a major concern for theorganizers, although ultimately they did decide to organize a show inIstanbul. But instead of working with local grass roots organizerswho had a track record of doing exactly what Live Earth has said areits main goals, the producers sought out a big time concert promoterwho was a convicted felon with ties to the mafia, a horriblereputation among artists, and who has no history of environmentalactivism. Sadly but not surprisingly, the Istanbul show was canceledbecause of "financial and logistical snags." My friends have stillorganized a great concert, but no one outside of Turkey will knowabout it.

The simple but profoundly depressing fact is that the entire worldeconomic and political system as it exists today is based aroundpractices that are destroying the planet slowly but surely. Thecorporations, political elites and others who benefit from theexisting system are not good Christians and will not be swayed byBono's religiously grounded arguments. They are not goodenvironmentalists and will not be swayed by Al Gore's arguments atLive Earth. They will do whatever is necessary -- lie, cheat, steal,oppress, exploit, murder and wage war -- to maintain control of a worldeconomy that sees half the world living on $2 per day or less whileinequality and poverty increase in line with the amount of CO2 in theair, in order to continue to reap their huge salaries and bonuses andmaintain their stranglehold on power.

Against such a superpower few alternatives exist. One is al-Qaida,but its ideology and actions have only strengthened rather thanweakened the system, while enriching the oil and arms barons who mostbenefit from it even more than they could have ever imaginedpossible. Another is comprised of the multitude of grass rootsmovements around the world who, before 9/11 gave governments theexcuse to use increasing levels of violence and abuse of rightsagainst them, were achieving enough success in raising awarenessabout the current system to have been considered, for a brief moment,a "second superpower" that could potentially alter the shape of theworld economic system with its demands.

In the middle stands all those movements on the front lines of the"arc of instability" around the world, who are fighting a life ordeath battle against western oil and mining companies and their owncorrupt governments and economic elites, and who will increasinglyuse whatever means necessary in that struggle-in the process comingto look either more like al-Qa'eda or like Seattle's turtle people,depending on what the rest of us do to help them.

If Kanye West, Sting, Melissa Ethridge, The Red Hot Chili Peppers andthe dozens of other artists donating their time to the effort tocombat climate change really want to do some good, they should taketheir digital cameras, go to the third world communities on the frontlines, record their stories -- and their music -- and stand with themagainst the corporations and governments (including ours) who arecommitted to exploiting their lands and resources down to the world'slast drop of fresh water and clean air. Anything less than that isjust a concert, and as Roger Daltrey points out, the world alreadyhas enough of those.

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