Al Gore and His Lucky Number

In July this year, seven will be the number on everyone's lips as seven concerts are held in seven continents on the seventh day of the seventh month in this, the millenium's seventh year.

The concerts are all part of Live Earth - Al Gore's Live Aid for Climate Change. A call to arms for countries to act to prevent global warming.

They will be held simultaneously in London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Johannesburg, Shanghai and Rio De Janeiro, with an audience of millions watching live as proceedings are streamed on MSN.

Performances from The Police, Kelly Clarkson, Duran Duran, and The Foo Fighters to name just a few will raise awareness of the need to act on climate change and do for climate change what the Live Aid concerts did for poverty.

And that's where suspicion creeps in. What exactly did the Live Aid concerts do for poverty?

Very little really; plastering over the key issues behind word poverty, they provided a relatively insignificant amount of aid which made very little long-term difference. They raised awareness and we all donned white wrist bands and marched on Edinburgh to show our support. But for all the good intentions, very little came from it.

And that's the same worry with Live Earth. The main intention here is not to raise money (shame, considering its £55 for a ticket!) but to create awareness and pressure people into making a change - but at what cost?

With seven concerts on seven continents, musicians and celebritieswill be flown around the world to do their good deeds. This of course will require air travel which, if Al Gore has taught us nothing else, we all know is a major source of carbon emissions.

Only two line-ups have been announced as yet, with US-based bands The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Foo Fighters, Black Eyed Peas and Beastie Boys set to play in London whilst the UK's very own Katie Tunstall will join The Police in New York.

How many round trips accross the Atlantic does that make? You guessed it - 7. A total of 14 flights, travelling a combined 41,433 miles and splutterng a total of 16,158lbs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

But it doesn't stop there. Artists from the UK and the US are sure to be playing at the other concerts. While the line-ups have not yet been announced, one can assume the following as, at best a very conservative estimate:

Sydney - Two acts from the UK (a 21,106 mile round-trip) and one from the US (19,887 miles)

Johannesburg - One from the UK (22,511 miles) and one from the US (15,934 miles)

Tokyo - One from the UK (11,884 miles) and one from the US (13,506 miles)

Rio De Janeiro - One from the US (9,599 miles)

Shanghai - One from the UK (11,446 miles) and one from the US (14,746 miles)

That comes to a grand total of 203,164 miles - contributing a whopping 79,234lbs of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Suddenly the concert isn't as green as we think, and if you factor in the energy to power the concerts themselves, getting people to and from the show and then all the millions of computers powered up to stream it live on MSN the likey total is probably double that.

Admittedly, this is not a great deal in itself - in fact, even a small undeveloped country such as Tonga produces up to 240million lbs of carbon dioxide each year.

The concerts aren't going to have the seas boiling and the Sahara freezing over, but as Gore himself once said, "If we do not drastically reduce this blanket of global warming polution, the world would likely cross the point of no return."

So perhaps the number on everybody's lips this summer shouldn't be seven, but 79,234 - because that's how many unecessary pounds of carbon dioxide we will be dumping into the atmosphere courtesy of Gore's good intentions.

Click here to see how much carbon dioxide your air travel produces.

BROWN SHOWS HIS PRIMARY COLOURS - A VERY FAINT SHADE OF GREEN

I felt Gordon Brown’s ‘green’ tax come into effect this week after I received an e-mail informing me that the cost of my flight to London next month had increased.


It said:

“You may have heard that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, recently announced that Air Passenger Duty (APD) - a tax implemented, controlled and collected by the UK Government - is due to increase on all flights departing from UK airports after 1 February 2007”

Well, there’s no doubting where EasyJet are laying the blame!

And fair enough, they’re certainly not wrong. But what is interesting about the tax is where it goes. As a ‘green’ tax it is (allegedly) implemented to reduce the number of flights and thus reduce carbon emissions.

Now, dear reader, let me tell you what the tax meant to me. My flight cost £8.99. It now costs £18.99 – an increase of almost 110%. But I’m still flying to London for just £18.99!

The same journey by train, on the same date would cost £55 and take twice as long. If I drove, the cost in petrol alone would be £35, with London’s congestion charge raising the cost to £43.

So how, with air fares so low at the moment, will a simple £10 tax stop people from flying?

The answer is, it won’t.

Instead, it is simply another of Brown’s stealth taxes, swelling the treasury’s coffers to be spent on education and health – two departments with bank accounts leaking so much money they make a Thames water pipe blush.

This ‘green’ tax is not helping protect the environment, it is simply increasing the burden of tax on the British public – now the most highly taxed populace in Europe.

If Gordon Brown really wants to be seen as a ‘green’ Prime Minister and challenge the Tories on it, he is going to have to go much further.

Tough on global warming, tough on the causes of global warming. Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?