'hypocrisy takes the stage'
Posted on 07/11/2007 8:57:25 AM PDT by GMMAC
Hypocrisy takes the stage
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007
EDMONTON -The '80s band The Police brought their reunion tour to Commonwealth Stadium in early June. Two nights before their concert I had occasion to visit the venue, and when I pulled into the parking lot I thought I had stumbled onto a new-truck show.
Really.
There were 16 to 20 gleaming semis all lined up, as if for viewing-- with matching trailers. Only when I saw the name of the Chicago-based tour production company on the doors of the cabs did I twig to the convoy's real purpose: hauling all the lights, speakers, cables, sound panels, costumes and so forth from one city to the next.
So when I saw the band's front man, Sir Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. "Sting"), promise the Live Earth concert crowd last weekend that he would "work to reduce" his carbon footprint, I laughed out loud.
Just what would that mean? Limiting his promoters to using just 12 semis?
It's a safe bet that The Police's 38-site, six-month tour will generate a bigger "carbon footprint" than I will in my entire lifetime. Ten lifetimes. Even if I disconnected the catalytic converter on my full-sized SUV and ripped off the muffler.
Sumner's timid pledge, though, is typical of celebrity and activist hypocrisy on the enviro file. And I'm not even talking about all the environmental damage done over the weekend pulling off the eight-city Live Earth concert.
I have some sympathy for the concert organizers who, when confronted with inconvenient truths -- such as the fact that performers flew more than 400,000 carbon-belching kilometres to the various venues for a single day of performances -- gave a sort of you-have-to-break-some-eggs-to-make-omelettes response.
What I have real trouble with is preachy (and ill-informed) celebrities exhorting the rest of us to live like ecomonks in unlit, unheated sod hovels while they live the high life burning through more carbon-based fuels in a week than a platoon of army Humvees in a year.
I don't mind that Sir Gordon probably hopped a private jet after his concert Friday night at Chicago's Wrigley Field, so he could be at New Jersey's Giants Stadium in time for Saturday's "Concert for a Climate in Crisis."
What rankles more is that when it comes to driving ticket sales on his own tour -- when it comes to making Gordon Sumner money --he has no problem with hiring a fleet of big, diesel-powered, soot-spewing highway trucks to fill with such eco-necessities as 100,000-watt speakers.
Frankly, I don't care if Sting designs a roadshow that requires 50 big rigs to transport. As regular readers of this column know, I set very little store in the theory that the tiny, tiny fraction of our atmosphere made up of man-made carbon dioxide is causing our planet to warm precipitously.
Britain's highest circulation tabloid, The News of the World, pointed out Sunday that Madonna, one of the green movement's biggest celebrity advocates, is an "eco disaster." With her "Nine homes across the world, six cars and three private jet trips in a year," (not to mention "her 20 scheduled return flights and a 56-stop Confessions Tour"), the star has a carbon footprint nearly 60 times that of the average North American.
I'm not the only one to think this. In fact, Live Earth proved a bust in the end. It may have set a new record for number of viewers of its Internet broadcast stream. But that accounts for only 10 million worldwide. Its television ratings were abysmal. In the U.S., it drew an audience smaller than the one that watches women's college softball or Stanley Cup hockey. Optimistically, perhaps 300 million watched at some point around the world. But that was a fraction of the two billion organizers had predicted.
To limit energy use, Live Earth organizers implemented "green event guidelines," including only using electricity from renewable resources (as if it were possible to separate out renewable and non-renewable electricity as it comes off the power lines), using LED lights as part of production lighting (the operative term being "part of." Don't worry, no high-powered spots went without work during Live Earth). Staff and artist air travel was offset by buying carbon credits (which stops no emissions, but merely appeases the consciences of those doing the travelling), minimizing waste through recycling and reuse and using hybrid or high-efficiency cars for ground travel when possible. (Of course, it's not possible to use them for stars who insist on SUV limos to carry them to their save-the-planet gigs.)
If you want to know what I'm doing for the environment, I've pledged myself not to live like a "green" celebrity.
lgunter@shaw.ca
© National Post 2007
'hypocrisy takes the stage'
Roxanne - you don’t hafta put on the red CFL...
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In the new “green” world, NASCAR, Indy, tractor pulls and Motocross should be abolished. Professional sports teams (and entertainers) should travel in a pattern that uses the least amount of energy, or causes the least amount of emissions (no more flying back and forth). Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
Nope, nope, nope.... the simple movement of the arm causes perspiration, and humans can’t contribute that much added moisture to the atmosphere, and the candles give off too much carbon, too.
You know, we can’t even kill ourselves either because our bodies are a toxic mess when we decompose...
Darn! Why did we even bother come here in the first place?
Why? If anything, they should be promoted for showing the power that can be had from "green fuel", AKA alcohol. Not one was smart enough to realize they run on alcohol.
Why? If anything, they should be promoted for showing the power that can be had from "green fuel", AKA alcohol.
I heard a far left weirdo in Canada complain about this a few weeks ago, and several very stupid people called into the radio talk show, all of them complaining about the "fossil fuel" spewing races cars.
Not one was smart enough to realize they run on alcohol.
And lets not forget to remind the 'music recording industry' all the tree that get chopped down, and the oil used to stamp out billions of (crappy) cd's, many of which end up in landfills, or in the case of Ditsy Chicks, get burned in public bonfires in protest of their hippocracy.
They are the biggest beneficiary's of the American music Industry-one of America's largest polluters- protected by America's freedom to spew their lyrics of treason and hippocracy without fear of persecution and with great reward from our capitolist society.
I really don't know how any "musician" can look himself in the mirror. But then money makes people do things, and so do drugs.
This Live Earth event is probably the best thing that could possible have happened.
It put the spotlight squarely on hypocrisy of people such as Madonna and Sting. It exposed the hypocrisy of limousine liberals. and it exposed the lunacy of the fringe leftist elements within our society.
The only glaring omission in most of the articles I have seen thus far is to point out who benefitted the most from Live Earth. Where did all the money go?
Some pigs are more equal than others...
Click on any of the images below to see the video.
Al Bore invented the Internet.
Putfile Version (Higher quality)
The moonbats have been voting down the first video "Inconvenient Hypocrisy", be sure to vote it back up to the top of the heap of videos about Al Bore.
Good anti-Global Warming video that picks apart Gore's stupid film.
Case in point... Al Gore's mansion uses far more electricity in a month than most ordinary homes do in a year. However, Al Gore is "smart enough" to buy carbon offsets so it is OK for him to live like this. The Earth Aid promoters said that planting 100,000 trees would offset the carbon footprint of this propaganda tour so it's OK.
"The mother-lode of anti-enviro-nonsense info"
Don't miss the National Post's
on-going now 29 (!) article series:
Climate change: The Deniers
In my opinion, this guy “Sting”, or “Sir Gordon Sumner” if you will, is and has always seemed to be one of the most pompous, arrogant pricks in all of music.
Right, why do we exist at all? Those space aliens sure were stupid to put us here if all we’re going to do is cause trouble. Sheesh.
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