Live Earth Making Enemies

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-logo-liveearth.jpgAl Gore’s Live Earth concerts (the lineup of which I controversially dissed a while back) are getting some more negative publicity. First up, last week, a surprisingly coherent Roger Daltry of the Who told England’s The Sun that “the last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.” Well now! How do you feel, Mr. Daltry, about using a notoriously wasteful type of event to raise environmental awareness? “I can’t believe it,” he says, “let’s burn even more fuel.” Daltry did of course play both LiveAid and Live8, which were apparently not powered by fuel but by magical unicorns on treadmills. Speaking of LiveAid, Sir Bob Geldof himself was even more harsh on Live Earth, saying “everybody” already knows about global warming. Knows about, and rejects, Sir Bob, just like that crazy idea we evolved from monkeys.

Now I see on BoingBoing that if you want to organize a house party or other event in support of Live Earth, you’ll have to follow restrictions that make the hoop-jumping required to just buy a ticket look like a walk in the park. Hey, Al, can I call my event “Friends of Live Earth?” Well, not exactly:

“Friends of Live Earth” cannot, directly through visual or other communications, be linked with any organization, including sponsors/broadcasters of your event. “Friends of Live Earth” should only be used as a supporting message.

Oh, OK. As soon as I understand what that means, I’ll start baking cupcakes for my party.

As far as the rest of the lineups are concerned, Sydney, Australia looks okay, if only for the presence of Wolfmother, and the only two artists I’ve heard of on the German lineup are DJ Sasha and Snoop Dogg. This negative press having an impact on the event’s success seems unlikely, but on July 7th, I still think I’d rather just change some of my light bulbs to fluorescents.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate