On Saturday, 7/07/07, MSN sponsored Live Earth, The Concert for a Climate in Crisis. This 24-hour global event featured more than 150 of the world’s top bands performing on all seven continents, with concerts in Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Istanbul, London, New York, and other cities around the world.

There have been many, many critics of the Live Earth concert ("all the pop stars traveling leaves a huge carbon footprint", "there was not 2 billion people watching", "why should we believe the pop stars", "climate change is not real, not even the scientists can agree"), but even if the world is not about to blow up, surely being better to the planet is good for us, great for our children and sometimes a matter of survival for other people and animals in the more extreme climates.

If you have missed everything that Live Earth was about, go have a look at the SoapBox video here. 

An interesting blog on the whole should we shouldn't we explore these types of events can be found at A great review of what it is all about can be found at http://bettinathenomad.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/rocking-it-the-green-way/.

Now that all the concerts have been played out, they can be viewed from the http://liveearth.uk.msn.com/ site. At the Live Earth site, in addition to streaming the performances, the MSN team has posted an extensive collection of interactive media and content that is designed to entertain, educate, and inspire all of us to work together to create a more sustainable environment. 

For your personal reading I can recommend http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17950339/ which has some interesting stories about businesses and the community and pledge section on http://liveearth.uk.msn.com/ has some great tips on doing your bit.

My Personal Carbon footprint include a broken boiler last year which meant that I was burning gas through the night and had electric heaters in my house, yet I still seem to fall under the national average for a household, even though we have 2 children and lots of computers.  You can calculate yours at http://specials.uk.msn.com/carbonemissionsestimator

I am glad to say that I have already made the switch to low energy light bulbs in chez Overton and we now turn off things we used to put on stand-by ... "yes Mrs Overton, I said we now turn the Media Center Extender OFF in the kitchen, not just turn off the screen!!".  We also have good insulation in the house, part fill the kettle for one or two hot drinks, buy local produce, buy energy efficient products and all those other things that are good.  This year were even holidaying in the UK, but I can't claim that was us being green that resulted in that - it was that the UK has all we need this year with a 1 year old baby.

Anyway, that will do for today - enjoy the concerts, think about your climate impact and how you can help make the environment nice for us all.  After all, Wimbledon was almost a wash out due to the most rain in July!!

ttfn

David