Live Earth legacy

The Live Aid concert series was well meaning and hopefully did raise awareness of a serious problem but it fell short of achieving demonstrable results for several reasons. For one thing, this series of concerts was conducted in the same manner as Live Aid which resulted in little if any progress in relieving African suffering.

The oldest people involved seemed to be the performers (ie. Sting, Phil Collins et al.) and given the general apathy of youth, little will be done to influence the politicians and the corporations. Young people do not vote in any significant numbers to affect political races. And the massive disposable income in the hands of the youth are testament to where their priorities lie, music sales and movie box office returns. There is lip service paid to environmental issues, but serious action is not in the books.

I thought the concerts were great entertainment. It was great seeing Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) playing in Hamburg where the crowd wouldn't let him quit. He had to play an encore - Peace Train - the Pussycat Dolls did trigger my salivory glands and I thoroughly enjoyed the spirit shown by Melissa Etheridge as she asked the crowd time and again "What's happened to us?"

The trouble is, as far as authority figures go, Al Gore is the principal voice - which is great, he's a very effective communicator. But he's not enough. The ones with the resources to make a difference are not speaking up, not about global warming. Gates and Buffet are more concerned with saving lives in Africa without regard to the suffering that will come when the planet heats up over the next decade.

The trouble is, people are not afraid enough. I'm watching Jaws which had an incredible impact on the psyche of people. Fear of sharks - almost entirely unfounded given the number of shark attacks in history - increased several fold and resulted in the hunting and slaughter of sharks on a wholesale level.

People need to be afraid of the consequences of not taking action NOW. An Inconvenient Truth needed to be the environmental equivalent of Jaws.

Personally, I think it's too late, but we are in a position to minimize how BAD it will get. And we are missing our opportunity because people are not scared enough. People will not utilize their purchasing power to influence corporations unless it really means something to them. Convenience will outrule other considerations unless people get very concerned.

We are on the brink of a tipping point. As the poles warm up and ice melts away, the ground will absorb more and more heat which will be retained. As forests wither and die, less carbon dioxide will be absorbed. The blanket of greenhouse gases will thicken, Antartica will melt and Greenland will melt. Sea levels will rise up to forty metres or 120 feet. The deserts of Africa will extend to cover more of the continent of Africa, the deserts of China will expand. The mid west of North America will dry out as will significant portions of South America. The heat in Europe in summer will mirror the Middle East now, and the Middle East will become uninhabitable during summer.

Ecosystems will change all around the globe. Temperate Forests will become tropical forests, but that won't happen spontaneously. There will be a massive die off first because more tropical plants will not have migrated fast enough to fill the gap, not when this thing feally starts happening. Rain will deluge some areas, other areas will be drought plagued. There will be a mass migration of humanity on a scale never before seen. Not even to mention the mass extinctions.

And pollution will worsen.

Ironically, as people react knee jerk, there will be efforts to lessen air pollution to cut down on the smog, but this will reduce the Planet Dimming which is actually keeping us cooler than what we should be. As the air clears, the planet will actually heat up even faster. But pollution is another issue which presents a different threat - toxic poisoning of the environment. We are messing up our nest in many, many ways.

The Permafrost is already thawing. As it does so, methane is released into the atmosphere. As oceans warm, the methane lying frozen along the bottom will gradually warm and rise to the surface. This all happened in the end of the Permian Age, but it was volcanic activity which was the trigger then, and the process actually took a thousand years or more. We are going to do the same thing in under a hundred years.

I won't live to see the worst of it. And I don't have children. But those who do, and who are doing nothing now, are condemning their children and grandchildren to such misery and suffering that is unheard of here. And there wil be wars, and famine, and such thirst. We will create Dune.

People have to be scared or they won't act. Those who say being scared will make them feel apathetic are just looking for any excuse not to do anything.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.