Still, this wasn’t just a rock extravaganza; all of the activity was supposed to be in service of building global awareness of climate change and what to do about it. Just how Green was Live Earth, really? Large stadium concerts aren’t exactly eco-friendly, and while efforts were made to reduce energy consumption, waste and transportation, it’s unclear just how successful those efforts were. At all seven locations, wind and solar energy was purchased from local utilities to offset the energy demand. Bio-fuel was used to power on-site generators for the shows at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium, London’s Wembley Stadium, and at Rio’s Copacabana Beach, which, with some 400,000 revelers, drew the event’s biggest audience. Energy-efficient LED’s were used for stage lighting. Plywood normally used for ground cover and tent-flooring was replaced with mats made from reusable composite materials. Carbon credits will eventually be bought to offset the air travel of event staff and performers.
But details on the local shows were hard to come by. Officials with both Live Nation, the event’s Beverly Hills-based promoter, and Live Earth, couldn’t say whether the carbon offsetting or renewable energy purchasing extended to the municipal activities associated with the concert. Were the local police at the Giants Stadium show who provided security for the event covered by the green umbrella? Were their emissions being offset? Was the New Jersey State Police helicopter circling above running on bio fuel? No one could say. And as for the overall efficiency of the event, other than mentioning some new computer software being used to ratchet down energy consumption at the stadium, members of Live Earth’s green team couldn’t say how it compared to similar events held at Giants Stadium. Did they have a goal of achieving a certain percentage of energy efficiency? They did not. “This is the first phase of implementing a new sustainable model for events like this,” said Joshua Stempel of Live Earth. “There are so many logistics involved, we’re just getting started in learning how to make them greener.” Stempel said that a carbon audit of the entire event will be done in the coming weeks.
In the end, it’s unlikely the event was anywhere near carbon-neutral, but it was surely more environmentally-friendly than a typical summer stadium event. Hundreds of volunteers in blue t-shirts manned trashcans and recycle bins fitted with cards claiming that all waste collected would be sorted with the goal of diverting 90 percent of it to a landfill.
Putting on a “green"show costs, well, a lot of green. Pre-sorting trash, and having vendors at concessions stands switch to biodegradable containers made of post-consumer waste—these sorts of measures come at a price. “Overall, there aren’t a lot of savings,” admitted Bruce Moran, president of Live Nation. “Maybe down the road there will be, but right now it’s more expensive.” How much more Moran couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. “It’s not twice as expensive,” he ventured. “But it’s not an insignificant amount either.”
Part of the added cost seems to have been passed onto the concertgoers. Many floor section tickets carried a face price of between $170 and $200, with some of the proceeds benefiting Gore’s Alliance and its mission of informing people about carbon emissions. In the weeks leading up to the event, audience members were sent emails and text messages encouraging them to use mass transportation or to carpool. But the only mass transit available directly to the Meadowlands was New Jersey Transit Authority buses coming from midtown Manhattan. “I would’ve taken the bus, but I wasn’t going to drive all the way into Manhattan just to do it,” said Michael Frank, who drove 30 minutes from his home in Short Hills, New Jersey in his Mercedes-Benz. “That’s the problem with the Meadowlands,” he said. “No trains, no metro stops. You’ve got to drive to get here. You have no choice.”
During post-performance press conferences, the artists displayed a variety of green awareness habits. KT Tunstall, Keith Urban, and Dave Matthews use tour buses that run on bio diesel; Tunstall said these days she only flies Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic, which puts profits into developing renewable fuels. While Matthews talked about the need to harvest methane emissions from farm animals—“I’m not sure how you go about attaching a tube to a cow’s butt,” he joked—rapper Akon, who reportedly drives a Lamborghini Gallardo (9 miles per gallon) and owns a South African diamond mine, admitted that he was only just now cluing into environmentalism. “I just realized today what the meaning of green is,” he said.
Between bands, the audience got a steady dose of public service announcements from the Giants Stadium Jumbotrons. Short black and white video spots featured celebrities urging people to do the small things to help make a difference: Will Ferrell intently changing a light bulb, Julia Louis-Dreyfus reminding people to power down their laptops and monitors when not using them. Quirky cartoons promoted locally-sourced products, pushing people to break the global supply chains that bring bottled water across hemispheres and vegetables across time zones. Still, more than a few event staffers were seen carrying around Fiji brand water bottles—an ironic illustration of the vast difference between talking about going green and the difficulty in actually doing it.
The concert’s critics made their presence known. Throughout the day, a small prop plane circled above, towing banners with such messages as Don’t Believe Al Gore and Global Warming??? Judging by the tagline, a Website called demandebate.com paid for the aerial signage.
Gore returned to the stage during the early evening, issuing a call for action, raising his right hand and asking everyone to join him in making “the pledge.” He then ticked off his seven points on climate change, including demanding the United States join an international treaty in the next two years to cut global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries, “in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth.”
For all the good intentions, it was Jersey local Jon Bon Jovi who drew the biggest applause of the day. Bon Jovi stayed largely silent on the green agenda, but did rip through a quick set that closed with “Livin’ On a Prayer,” a crowd-pleaser that still rocked stadium 20 years after hit it #4 on the Billboard charts. Smashing Pumpkins, Roger Waters, and the Police were still to come, but much of the crowd exited when Bon Jovi did-some 60,000 people heading for their cars to drive home from the biggest environmental concert ever.
