With eight major concerts across the globe this past Saturday, Live Earth was quite the production—but was it too much of one? Critics are iffy on whether the event, designed to raise awareness of global warming, did more harm than good. It’s a common concern for those planning green events, which by their very nature are not easily environment-friendly, no matter how many carbon offsets are purchased. In the case of Live Earth, that meant planting 100,000 trees, according to ABC News, which asked if the 1,000 tons of garbage generated was worth the gain.New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote that celebrity-driven charity events can smell of too much self-promotion for any cause, especially regarding the environment: “Unlike benefits for world hunger or genocide, celebrity efforts to curb the greenhouse effect backlash into the glass-house effect: People who own Escalades, private jets and McMansions shouldn’t recycle bromides at people who fail to carpool to work.”
Environmentalists were also seeing red, claimed The New York Post, which added up the miles the artists traveled (222,624) to get to the different locations, many on ozone-depleting private jets. Joan Anderman of The Boston Globe notes the inherent hypocrisy (such as London headliner Madonna’s nine homes and fleet of cars, and setting the New York concert amid the petrochemical corridor of the New Jersey Turnpike) but finds that ultimately the celebrities did their job by bringing in the audience and raising awareness: “It seems that the potential to influence nearly a third of the world's population to engage the issue and change their behavior outweighs the negative impact.”
