Live Earth

 

So, there’s been a lot happening on this Island lately.  A new Prime Minister and cabinet, torrential rain and people dieing in floods (at least we didn’t have Bush dealing with that though) – terrorism that fortunately nobody died in – and the Diana and Live Earth concerts.  Oh, and Wimbledon – how could I forget that?

 

Didn’t bother with the Diana concert at all (although I did watch the Ricky Gervais spot on You Tube – I wonder if his Live Earth spot is up yet?  I’ll check after this).  Anyway I ended up watching quite a bit of the Live Earth concert – it was good to have on in the background.  At the beginning I was a bit cynical about it all I suppose, we’ve had Live 8 (which I had tickets for but couldn’t get to), and now Diana and Live Earth, and every time it seems like they’re trying to recreate the spirit and atmosphere of the original Live Aid.  I was all set to be all cynical and scathing at multi-millionaire ‘rock stars’ pontificating at us and telling us to only use an egg-cup full of water in the bath, turn off all our lights and appliances and only fill the kettle half way – when I found myself actually getting quite into it.  I was finding the eco-evangelism strangely seductive.

 

By the time I’d finished watching I was just about ready to go out and buy some of them funny shaped light bulbs it’d got to me that much, but then I realised that I’d just watched 5 hours of the program hooked up to my stereo blaring out at full volume while my WiFi’d laptop sat there not being used except to wilf every now and then – so I kind of thought it might be a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.  And although it’s been said many times before that really is the problem isn’t it?  We are totally not prepared to give up any of the modern conveniences and technological advances of modern times – and rightly so.  To do so would be counter-progressive.

 

Technology improves lives and also saves them.  So I kind of suspect that the vast majority of us are merely paying lip service to eco-evangelism – and then driving off in our four by fours.  Will putting a brick in my cistern really save the planet?  Maybe, but then you haven’t seen my toilet after I’ve just evacuated last night’s vindaloo in it!

 

Not to worry though, I’m sure we’ll find solutions to it all – that’s what we do – us clever little human beings.  Isn’t global warming really just a natural bi-product of success and progress?  It’s like when you start a business – you have a dream of what it will be like when you’re turning over ‘x’ amount of money, but you find that when you are making ‘x’ amount of money you’re still not as well off as you thought you’d be.  This is because in the process of making ‘x’ amount of money – you incur all kinds of expenses and overheads.  This is just the nature of all things – we go 3 steps forward and two steps back.  But we keep going, and we find solutions to problems and become more efficient and less wasteful – and we keep making 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, until one day – looking back we find that we really are in that position that we dreamed of being in the first place.

 

So, in the end I’m sure we will find a way to have our cake and eat it – oh, and we’ll have hotter summers too.