Live Earth (continued)

So I guess I upset a few loyal readers including my brother with my earlier post.

The truth is I care a lot about global warming and our reliance on carbon fuels (related but not the same issue).

But I am tired of these big concerts that try to inspire us to do more. They don't work for me.

Bob Lefsetz says it better than I did this morning.

Comments

[Brian]

Bull. You said what you said, presumably because you meant it. So what if some people didn't like it?

Others appreciate your candor.

"A knife usually cuts through the clutter better than a spoon," as the saying goes.

[Mo]

Fred, great link (and a link within it of Seth Godin's take) of Bob's take on this.

I will be honest, I am not overly excited about the Climate Change issue. I don't drive a SUV but I don't drive a hybrid either. I don't go out of my way to change my lifestyle to harm or enhance the planet.

With that siad, in the other post I commenteed on the notion that the key players/supporters in the Climate Change movement are out of touch with reality(real people, real towns, real families, real jobs...).

I was in Houston two weeks ago and I was making my way from the Airport to NASA and I immediately needed to get some cash for an upcoming toll road and the first place I could do that was at a Walmart so I pulled in to the huge parking lot and I noticed a large number of vehicles parked were trucks(small-large) or SUVs with a few Detroit sedans. I immediately thought, wow, these people don't really care about Global Warming and if out of all places, Houston with the smog and haze should be a prime example to drive the issue home.

People just don't care. That is the biggest problem. I highly doubt those people were watching Live Earth today and feeling enlightened about the climate change issue. They are worried about going to their construction or industrial job next day where they will need to haul equipment or tools to make sure they can feed their family.

[greenskeptic]

I wrote this on my blog a few days ago and got slammed too:

"What we need now is to focus on solutions -- and quick. We don't need more awareness building, we need investments in innovative solutions. The time to act is now. Let's save the party for after we solve this problem."

I just think the whole "Concert for..." thing is dead. But that Spinal Tap...that was an amazing reunion!

[Robert Seidman]

Excuse the long rant, but, it seemed like a good place for it. Tell your brother that railing against hypocrisy is very “pro-earth” in the long run. But you can also tell him the Earth will be fine no matter how bad *we* screw up, it’s all of us who won’t be fine if we screw up really badly.

The Earth will certainly get over it, and if it takes a million or two million years for the Earth to recover once humans are no longer its primary parasite, the Earth won’t care. We could detonate every single freaking nuclear warhead we had and it would suck like a mofo for humans, but ultimately the earth would be fine, and “life” would go on. Just not life as we know it. Nuclear winter means jack sh*t to the Earth, because the Earth has all kinds of time.

I believe we are destined (hopefully not in your lifetime, your kids, or your grandkids either) for a wakeup call someday, and things being what they are, I believe nothing much at all will probably happen until the wakeup call. When we need to figure it out, we will figure it out. That’s how humans operate and that’s how the system works. Will it be too late? It depends on how you look at it. I doubt it will be too late for humans, because even if 50,000 were to survive global warming no ozone blah blah, that 50,000 would be enough. It’ll certainly be the end of anyone giving a flying f**k about Facebook, WiFi or the iPhone though.

To kill the Earth and life on it, we'd have to completely destroy the atmosphere -- that will kill us and any life form I can imagine for sure because it would be hot beyond any global warming BS, it would be “you just fried all of the oceans” and there is NO WATER AT ALL ANYMORE hot. For all I know the Earth could recover from that too, but if it takes 50 million years it won't do life as we know it any good.

As long as we’re wet as hell and there are oceans, there will be “life” and plenty of it. Whether humans can adapt to 150 degree surface temperatures if it came to that, I can’t say, but plenty of life will live in the ocean, as long as there are oceans. With or without us, the Earth will figure that out just fine.

Fred, other than you not just coming out and admitting you like cool technology products and want to play with them regardless of the “philosophical bent” of the company producing the technology, I’m fairly sure I’m philosophically aligned with you for the most part. Oh sure, you pump up technology that really isn’t THAT big of a deal (certainly not iPhone type of a big deal), but its stuff you invested in – if you didn’t pump it up I’d scratch my head and think, “What kind of a VC is Fred? What the hell is wrong with him!?”, so I don’t have any problem with your Facebook-loving Twittering at all. I do believe you’re enthused by those products, but I also believe you’ll be more enthused about the iPhod even with all the issues you have with it. I don’t expect we’ll ever see the “Damn, the iPhone is better than Facebook!” Blog entry, but I’m very ok with that too.

Please DO rail on the hypocrisy though, even if it pisses your brother off. If you want a good way to start this, I can help you, but you have to launch the site because people do read you and if I do it, it will just be some BS nobody EVER sees. My #1 “tree hugging hypocrisy” pet peeve is this: I see, over the course of the year hundreds and hundreds of vehicles with “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper stickers. Tahoe is a beautiful place and I do very much understand the sentiment, but over 50% of the vehicles I see this bumper sticker on are SUVs, including more than a fair share of LandRovers. Just in the normal course of walking around San Francisco, I could probably get 50-100 (unique) pictures a week of this.

Until humans don’t love being full of f--king s**t if it makes them feel good, nothing will change. You’re not OK with that, and that perhaps is the first step towards actually accomplishing anything. It’s definitely way better than slapping a “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper sticker on an SUV. I hope you will keep at it.

[Tom]

What truly amazes me is that Al Gore while preaching his Gospel of Global Warming seems to have a profit motive with every step he takes. Talking about GW, buy my book or buy my movie. Companies trying to buy their way into the environmentalists hearts, time to buy a carbon credit or two from Al Gore's company.

And when all else fails, lets run a save the world concert that we are making a pretty penny off of.

I have no problem with anyone making a profit off of their labors, but it does irk the hell out of me when they are sanctimonious about it. If Al Gore said, I have a profit motive and want to do a good deed, it would sound a great deal better than people digging up his relationships and hypocrisy of carbon usage, and him having to rebut it while heading to the bank.

[Fraser]

I always raise an eyebrow when people mistakenly assume that not caring for a tactic equates to not caring for the cause.

[jackson]

Robert,

Fred's brother knows all that.

Fred,

Well, you know........Jackson can be a grumpy puss, as we know.

But still, I understand that the big 'let's all feel good about this' concert thing doesn't work for you.

It's not meant to.

You don't need the 'message'.

There are those that need a 'let's all join in' vibe to actually join in.

The concert is for them.

And for me to mock.

http://www.thiskids.blogspot.com/

I think I had more fun watching than you di not watching.

[John]

Fred, you said it much better than Lefsetz, I basically had no idea what he was talking about. The Eagles? (dig Tweedy's recent pique at being compared to them :-) And his use of all-caps is ANNOYING.

Nice job inciting the ranters, but as Tom says they seem to be missing the point that you were criticizing the idea of big stupid pretentious concerts, not necessarily the causes they purport to be about.