Why Live Earth Will Fail

[My wife and I worked with Mark LeVine, the author of this piece, on the edited compilation Twilight of Empire in 2003, when the Bush regime was mounting its dumbfuck war in Iraq, which like all wars is just a poorly disguised cash grab. But with the catastrophic spectre of global warming upon us, I think a new book needs to be written about the lame efforts to stop it, Al Gore's Live Earth concert being one of them. When are Americans going to realize that empathetic wastes of cash aren't going to replace hard work and sacrifice? -- ST]

Why Live Earth Will Fail
[by Mark LeVine]
Live Earth certainly is long overdue. In fact, many of the same processes that are at the root of global warming — thoughtless consumption and the wars, exploitation, environmental degradation and the wholesale violations of the rights of entire peoples — were also at the root of the African famines that 1985’s Live Aid concert were organized to combat. In the intervening 22 years, however, the situation for the majority of the world’s poor has only gotten worse, not better. And we in the Global North are continuing to consume way beyond the means of the earth to sustain itself, all the while telling the rest of humanity that with enough hard work, World Bank loans and inducements (complete repatriation of profits, lax labor and environmental laws) to Western corporations to invest in their countries, they too can join the global consumer paradise. We seem always to forget to mention that if Americans, at six percent of the world’s population, needs to consume about a quarter of its wealth and resources to maintain our standard of living, the idea of the rest of the world even approaching our levels of consumption, energy usage and exploitation of land, water, resources and people would mean the end of civilization, if not most life on the planet, in a very short period of time....

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