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  Today Online 14 Jul 07
Live earth, this way, yeah!
Down Under with Neil Humphreys news@newstoday.com.sg

THERE is something undeniably excruciating about celebrities telling us how to live our lives.

They step off their private jets, berate a lackey for not serving the mineral water at room temperature and then bitch because there's too much yang and not enough ying in their hotel suite.

Then they have the audacity to order us — the insignificant little people — to like, y'know, totally, like, yeah, save the planet, man!

Their statements of incontestable fact on all matters green surpass anything a stand-up comedian could offer. Comments at last week's Live Earth concerts included:
"Let's all get smaller-ass cars, yeah!"
"We're here to save the Earth, yeah!"
"Didn't the reformed Genesis look like sad old men, yeah!"

You see, it was that aggressive, rock star "yeah!" at the end of the sentence that forced you to switch off all the lights in your apartment, wasn't it?

I half expected organisers to send out Paris Hilton to say: "I have done my bit for reducing the world's carbon dioxide emissions by spending a month in a single room with only one light, so if I can do it, so can you. And you don't even need to chalk up driving offences to do it, yeah!"

Celebrities have championed various environmental causes since Sting was getting lost in various rainforests and still not talking to the other Police band members.

There's nothing wrong with the noble crusade, only the banal comments that often accompany it.

Over the years, we've all suffered in silence as celebrities treated us to profound utterances like: "We have to save the planet, people, because that's, like, where we live." Only then can the penny drop around the globe.

Damn, Sting's right, you know. We all live here. We never bloody thought of that. Confucius had nothing on these guys.

In Singapore, we were thankfully spared the private jets and the pontificating. But several artistes were still guilty of some misty-eyed expressions and some disturbing levels of hair-pulling for the cameras.

Apparently, carbon dioxide emissions are not only cooking the planet, bleaching coral reefs, wreaking havoc with seasonal temperatures and causing the worst drought/floods in Australian history; they also cause hair loss.

If we don't address this inconvenient truth immediately, we run the serious risk of some of our local artistes losing their hair completely.

So, yes, let's satisfy the cynics' general smugness right now. Live Earth — just like its predecessors Live 8 and the sainted, how-dare-we-ever-criticise Live Aid — was swathed in hypocrisy.

Irony oozed from every flawless pore and private jet cabin. Madonna, with her huge "carbon footprint" is monumentally wrong.

Obviously. Jumping up and down at Wembley Stadium will not save the planet. It won't even save the f****** planet, as she called it, to demonstrate how angry she was with us all.

Live Earth was a travesty. Obviously.

Its performers clocked up air miles, its spectators littered the venues and its viewers choked the planet further by watching on their plasmas.

We told you Live Earth would be an overwhelming farce of hypocrisy and it was, say the smug among us.

But their insecurities could be a testament to the event's success. They jab a cynical finger of hypocrisy at their 42-inch, permanently switched on, plasma screen because it makes them feel better.

They do nothing, literally nothing, to address global warming, so they ridicule those who do instigate inconvenient lifestyle changes. That way, they can sleep peacefully while their electrical appliances stay on all night to record the "live" Copa America football match.

It's so much easier on our conscience to dismiss the tree-hugging green freaks.

God forbid we actually have to do something ourselves.

But the mood is gradually changing.

For all his hypocrisies, if Chris Rock tells us often enough to pump tyres and turn out lights, most of us listen eventually.

That's why it's naïve to judge Live Earth now. It's calling for us to implement little changes that are impossible to measure now.

Turn off lights, unplug appliances, recycle, reduce fuel consumption and use more public transport: That's pretty much all Live Earth demanded of its global audience for now and those tasks will be increasingly performed in the future, perhaps begrudgingly, but they will.

And here's why. Take your kids out this evening to admire the night sky and give them a dollar for every star they spot. You won't end up out of pocket. The masking glare from light pollution will make sure of that.

To use one of the most overused quotes, Oscar Wilde infamously said: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Most Singapore kids can't even do that.
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