Gores Share Stage with Artists they Hated
Matt Kibbe notes the irony of Al and Tipper Gore sharing the Live Earth stage with the likes of Madonna, Prince, and Snoop Dogg.
Remember the Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore a few years before her husband ran for president in 1988? The PMRC was the perfect political platform for the Gores to establish their deep concern for “the children” being exposed to suggestive lyrics in popular music. Madonna, today’s environmental crusader and Live Earth star, was then branded one of the “Filthy Fifteen” by Tipper and the PMRC. Congressional hearings were scheduled, and Senators’ hands were wrung. The quote printed above was in fact Senator Al Gore’s opening statement at the 1985 Senate hearing, excoriating music industry executives for pedaling dirty music to kids. In the process, he established his bonafides as a “New Democrat” right in time for his first national campaign.
Today, Al Gore gets along famously with the music industry, and has apparently gotten over his earlier concerns about lyrical content. “Music,” he now says, “is a universal language that can reach people in ways that no other medium can.” I agree with that, and humbly suggest that Tipper download Hamburg Live Earth headliner Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice.” She probably won’t like it, but hey, we all have to make sacrifices for the environment.
But, hey, it’s for the children.
via Nick Gillespie
Kibbe got our Snark of the Day award for this one.
I must admit, I hadn’t thought of that connection. That said, if one needed proof of that kind of political opportunism that Al Gore is engaging in, they’d need look no further than this.
“it’s for the children” does sound better than “it’s for the money”.
The entire events seems like a poster child for hypocricy.
Do any of you who are commenting on their hypocrisy actually know what the travel arrangements were? Do you know whether or not carbon offsets were purchased? Or are you simply attacking this as a backhanded way of trying to belittle the problem of global climate change?
I know what some of them were.
Could care less about carbon offsets.
No, they are doing a fine enough job at belittling “the problem of global climate change”.
We were covered by ice on multiple occasions before and it warmed up and went away. We’ve had warmer periods in the past and it cooled down. A bunch of people singing at concerts across the globe probably does more harm to the environment than doing nothing at all.
That the earth has been cooler and warmer in the past does not mean that the current warming is not problematic for us nor does it mean that it is natural.
A few references for you to peruse. A subscription is required, but any good research library will have these subscriptions.
“Modern Global Climate Change”
“Ecological responses to recent climate change”
“A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems”
These articles are not written at a lay person level, but you should be able to get the abstract, intro, and discussion easily enough.
If this is not at the appropriate level for you real climate is pretty good and is written for the lay person.
The hope was of course that it would raise awareness and motivate enough action to overcome any excess pollution by the event. Unfortunately events of this type for whatever cause tend to have short lived if any effect and people leave the show feeling they have done their part rather than inspired to continued action.
Grewgills the link below gives some information of the environmental impact of the concert. It was a destructive event particularly when one considers the fact that the concert was used to hector the rest of us into changing our lifestyle.
Live Earth is promoting green to save the planet – what planet are they on?
Second try without the links.
That the earth has been cooler and warmer in the past does not mean that the current warming is not problematic for us nor does it mean that it is natural.
A few references for you to peruse. A subscription is required, but any good research library will have these subscriptions.
“Modern Global Climate Change” Thomas R. Karl and Kevin E. Trenberth “Science” December 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5651, pp. 1719 – 1723
“Ecological responses to recent climate change” Gian-Reto Walther et al Nature 416, 389-395 (28 March 2002)
“A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems” Camille Parmesan and Gary Yohe Nature 421, 37-42 (2 January 2003)
These articles are not written at a lay person level, but you should be able to get the abstract, intro, and discussion easily enough.
If this is not at the appropriate level for you realclimate.org is pretty good and is written for the lay person.
The hope was of course that it would raise awareness and motivate enough action to overcome any excess pollution by the event. Unfortunately events of this type for whatever cause tend to have short lived if any effect and people leave the show feeling they have done their part rather than inspired to continued action. Given this the environmental impact could well be a net negative. Some efforts were made to make the concerts more green but these were apparently less than sufficient.