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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.
Lorne Gunter
Columnist/Editorial Writer, National Post
Columnist, Edmonton Journal
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