It's a tough choice: having to listen to Al Gore and Madonna banging on about the poorly woorly environment for a day, or climatic apocalypse. Personally, I think it's better to build yourself a raft and take your chances.
Now that we have a date and venues for the seven Live Earth concerts this summer, there will be no end of sanctimonious drivel served up about climate change as the rock world has one of its periodic fits of piety.
Live Earth is a con of Barnum-like proportions. It's a desperate rearguard action by a group of people more concerned about protecting/promoting their careers than about challenging the vested interests responsible for the changes in our climate.
Live Earth would not be happening were it not for Al Gore's melodramatic and flawed film An Inconvenient Truth - a documentary that was taken seriously by the entertainment world only when it started to turn a healthy profit (it's now the fourth highest-grossing documentary of all time). You can't help thinking that without the big box office, Gore would now be a sort of "End Is Nigh" weirdo just waiting for Louis Theroux and his camera crew to turn up.
Skipping over the fact that when Gore was supposedly the second most powerful person in the world for most of the 1990s he wasn't exactly Nice Guy Eco Man, and bypassing for a moment his energy-hogging Tennessee home, the stating- the-bleedin-obvious fact about the Live Earth shows is that they're akin to killing people to protest against war.
As John Buckley, the director of www.carbonfootprint.com (and a rare sensible voice in the climate change hysteria/debate) says: "The average amount of carbon emissions per person a year is 10 tonnes. Madonna [one of Live Earth's headliners] on her Confessions tour last year produced 440 tonnes of CO2 in just four months . . . and this was just the flights between countries and doesn't take into account the truckloads of equipment needed, the power
to stage such a show, and the transport of the thousands of fans getting to the gigs. It's great for the celebrities to come out and support the cause, but they then have to follow it up in their own lifestyles. Will Madonna and the others make any changes to their own lifestyle? Perhaps her next world tour will be performed in one venue, but broadcast to billions over the internet."
Of course, Madonna's next tour won't be performed in one venue, and neither will the tours of any of the other dozens of acts on the Live Earth bill. There is a deeper consideration here.
Ever since Napster and the digitalisation of the music world, the rock tour has taken on a whole new dynamic. For decades, the rock tour existed primarily to promote an album, but with album sales sliding, the tour - for many acts - has now become their main source of income. And the beauty of tour receipts is that the nasty record companies can't get their hands on the income generated (as they do with album sales). There's also great money to be made out of shoddy and overpriced merchandise.
This is why this summer in Ireland (as in the last few years), barely a weekend will go by without some significant live musical event. In the past, it used to be the odd Slane and maybe a big show in the RDS; now anyone with a sizeable back garden can stage a rock festival.
Bands are being pushed out on the road without any new product on the shelves. Now that awkward questions are being asked about the carbon emissions involved in touring, Live Earth presents the perfect platform for the rock tour to come over all concerned.
The Live Earth press release says that the shows will be setting a "green example" by using sustainable lighting, carbon-neutral travel (what, will Madonna walk to her gig?) and eco-friendly electricity. What it doesn't say is "for this day only". Live Earth? Just Say No.
