Live Earth Concert
I heard there was a live earth concert yesterday that attracted a large number of people to watch it. I, of course didn’t see it. I was busy doing something useful - moving furnature around the house to rearrange space, and give my 5 month old son his own bedroom.
It is my understanding that this concert was one of those “save the ______” concerts - fill in the blank with your favorite cause/crisis, hold a concert to show you care and then everyone goes back to living their lives and the people who put it on feel important because they did something about the problem. Here’s the problem with these things - how many people watched it because they really, truly, deep down in their heart were concerned about the climate and were hell-bent on doing something about it? How many of the people watched the concert because of the bands that were playing and while they “care” about the planet, they don’t care enough to do more than watch the concert.
Rich Galen wrote about the event on his Mullings enewsletter. He said that the biggest push that the concert made was to get everyone to go change their lightbulbs. Yippee!!! I wonder how many people went out an got new lightbulbs. Here’s the thing - I doubt many people did, or will, especially long term, because a lightbulb just isn’t worth people’s time. The only reason I think about a lightbulb is when one blows out and I have to change it, otherwise, I could care less about it. If you want to get people to do something, and make it appear like it’s something worth while, I like Rich Galen’s idea - go plant a tree. That’s an investment, not something you do because of an inconvenience of a blown lightbulb. And it actually makes some difference. Yeah, yeah, the whole CO2 thing. But really, planting a tree has more to do with enhancing the beauty around you and life around you. A tree is alive, a lightbulb isn’t. Because of a tree, you have the potential for other living things to call the tree home. What do you have with a lightbulb - just light.