Something only slightly more important than the million or so weddings that took place this past Saturday, 7/7/07 were the Live Earth concerts. Held around the world over 24 hours, the concert were intended to focus attention on climate change (you know, the slightly more neutral term for global warming).

The BBC did an interesting story on Madonna, one of Live Earth’s featured performers. She sang her new song “Hey You,” written for Live Earth as a call to action for the rest of us to rescue the environment. The song’s video shows cars being filled with gas, airplanes taking off, and polar bears alongside melting ice-caps. But Madonna herself?

“The lion’s share of the performer’s carbon output was generated during the Confessions Tour, one of the biggest pop tours ever staged.

Madonna clocked up 56 concerts across the world. At least 100 people, including crew, dancers and support staff, traveled with her.

Based on these calculations it’s estimated that the tour generated over 651 tons of carbon.

‘Madonna produces the same amount of carbon as 102 average Britons,’ said Mr. Buckley [from the company Carbon Footprint]. “Even though she runs a global business she’s also set herself up as some sort of ambassador for the environment.

‘Therefore she needs to be seen to be walking the walk as well as singing the song.’”

[From the BBC]

I think it’s a fantastic idea to do something that gets people to pay attention to climate change. However it’s difficult to see how lots of rock concerts helped to do that. It’s hard to find out what happened to the proceeds. I assume they went to environmental charities, but if they did, that certainly wasn’t a focus of the promoters. I wanted to be Pro Live Earth. If nothing else, I appreciate someone trying to do a good thing. But at some point I had to agree with what everyone else was saying: this was just ridiculous. I can’t think of how massive concerts could possibly be green.

“Organizers say the concerts will be as green as possible, with a tally of energy use being kept. Proceeds from ticket sales will go toward distributing power-efficient light bulbs and other measures that will offset the shows’ greenhouse gas emissions, they say.

“’This is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever,” Gore told The Associated Press recently.”The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think, will set the standard for years to come.’”

[From the New York Post]

This seems like it was a big waste of time. The press hardly covered the event. Are we really to believe that most of the concertgoers went to support the environment? Anyone who really cared about climate change that much would have stayed home and watched it on television. That would have left a much smaller carbon footprint. Instead it seems like it was just a bunch of musicians trying to assuage their environmental guilt. I truly don’t want to sound like I’m so down on this – I do appreciate the thought and the effort. But I think we need to find smarter ways to get the information across. It sends quite a mixed message to put on a concert and tell people not to do what you’re doing.

Note by Celebitchy: I’m with Jay in that I’m not sure if a series of concerts was the best way to get the message out, but I know that my husband and I watched a lot of the Live Earth coverage this weekend and we talked about conservation more than we normally do. We already do things like bring our own bags to the store and recycle. We have one car and my husband often bikes to work. After watching Live Earth we were talking about ways we can conserve at home. My husband mentioned that we might switch to bar soap instead of shower gel. I know this sounds minor, but there is a lot of plastic around shower gel, and by using bar soap instead we might make a difference. Little things like this do make a difference and I think if everyone can start to make even minor changes it will help. Just because the celebrities are big ass hypocrites doesn’t mean we can’t do our part.

Thanks to WENN for these pictures of Madonna at Live Earth. I deliberately picked photos of Madonna that were unflattering, but it’s not like I had to look hard.