Sunday, July 08, 2007

Al Gore Locks Himself Out Of Live Earth

SteveAudio: Ooh, baby it's a wild world
God bless Al Gore, Live Earth has started, and so far, I'm pretty underwhelmed. First, it's built totally around Internet Explorer™, and any other browser is feature-limited (so they say). So to every Mac owner out there who doesn't have a legacy copy of MIE, you're basically screwed.
This is just another example of a high-status media event being incompatible with anything non-Microsoft, but it's slightly surprising because Al Gore is himself a famous mac user.

I thought I liked Al Gore but this whole Live Earth thing is just a joke. The website is sponsored by Chevrolet, who make SUVs. The amount of energy used just by people travelling to the London and New Jersey concerts, is the equivalent of 7,000 people getting a plane across the Atalantic. Bands like RHCP and the Beastie Boys are flying in and out on their private jets. I read about someone who'd flown all the way across Australia to see the Sydney gig, and then left because the queues were too long.

Despairingly, it took the Arctic Monkeys of all people to point out the hypocrisy:
The rock group Arctic Monkeys said this week they had declined to take part in Live Earth, because it would be "a bit hypocritical". "Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for [stage] lighting," said drummer Matt Helders. He added: "There's more important people who can have an opinion. Why does it make us have an opinion because we're in a band?"
Well, indeed!

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1 comment:

SteveAudio said...

Thanks for the link.