Live Earth goes with the consumer flow

“It's trying to find our vulnerabilities and inadequacies ... and trying to position the goods that they're trying to sell so that they appeal to our vulnerabilities, to our inadequacies. In a sense we've become addicted to consumption as a way of trying to resolve, solve our personal inadequacies, to consume our way to happiness, even though we all know at a deeper level, it won't work.”

Live Earth is a different sort of brand. It appeals less to people's vulnerabilities than to their conscience. Music lovers who are feeling an ethical twinge regarding their contribution to global warming may feel they can purchase such a CD without guilt. In this way, the Live Earth CD, consciously or not, uses misdirection to contribute to the very problem it professes to oppose.

At best, the release of a CD/DVD - of “music as product” - would seem to give tacit approval to the systems of greed and material possession that have allowed the Western world to advance and flourish at the expense of poorer nations and the environment.

I am an admirer of the valuable work represented by Live Earth and the Alliance for Climate Protection. In the bulk of instances this good work outweighs mere good intentions (which in isolation, as we all know, pave the way to a hotter and less humane world).

There is also something to be said for using existing infrastructure and mediums of communication to proliferate a humane message. But there's a fine line between being within a corrupt system, and being part of that system.

With the mess left by Live Earth concertgoers a persistent image in naysayers' minds, the folk behind Live Earth would do well to be wary of that line, so that their valuable message should not trip over it.