Al Gore, who seems to have been transmogrified from boring political guy-in-a-tie to celebrity environmentalist since the release of his famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is dabbling in even more hollywood hype.
His doc is already nominated for an Oscar (and so is Melissa Etheridge for her song "I Need to Wake Up", which was featured in the film), but he's already moving on. He's become a concert-organizer.
He's putting together a series of global concerts set to play (and air) over a 24-hour period on July 7th. Sort of like the Live 8 thing that happened a couple of summers ago.
This concert's called Live Earth. Good title.
It's part of a broader campaign called "Save our Selves". I'm hating that title.
It sounds a little too inward-focused and way too cheesy. Sort of like, "I'm only doing this because I'd just hate it if the sea levels rose and the carpet in my beachfront mansion got damaged".
I mean, yeah, I don't want to be personally affected by climate change either, but I'm also a little concerned about those folks living in the low-lying areas of Bangladesh who have no voice whatsoever.
Apparently the concerts will happen in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Sydney, London and cities to be announced in Japan, Brazil and the United States. The countries with the cash. And a lot of the CO2 emissions. And the political clout. Nice for us that we can "Save Our Selves" if we decide to.
I'm being cynical - lots of people are concerned about global effects - but this title implies that we would only want to address climate change if it might hurt us personally - as opposed to harming other people, or the community at large. Thank goodness that any actions people in the West take to save themselves can't be reserved for the West alone - by definition, they'll have global effects.
Proceeds from the concert will go to fight climate change. Whatever works I guess.
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