Another inconvenient truth?
at 2:43pm on Wednesday, 21st February 2007
Al Gore has announced plans to organise seven concerts around the world to take action on climate change. He is backed by the man behind the Live8 concerts in 2005, Kevin Wall. With Make Poverty History and the One campaign seen by most people as a huge success, the news that these concerts will take place in response to another of the most pressing environmental and social issues that we face has been welcomed with open arms.
To a large extent, that reaction could be the right one. For all the criticism it received at the time, Live8 was instrumental in putting global injustice on the map for people who weren't usually interested. It made it clear that there were some partial solutions easily available to us and that such crippling gaps between rich and poor weren't an inevitable fact of life. And, most importantly, it made explicit the connection between the actions of our most senior politicians and the lives of people living in some of the poorest countries in the world.
It's this political arena where Live Earth has a harder path to tread. The people with the power to make the biggest difference here are big business and the governments that regulate them (or don't). Businesses often have the worst carbon track-records and access to the resources to develop the technology to stop that from being the case. But they also have profits and shareholders interests' to safeguard.
The equivalent of the organised "anti-green" (or at least, anti-regulation) lobby didn't exist for Make Poverty History - our leaders were only too happy to be seen frolicking with Bono and Bob in the run-up to the concerts and G8. It's hard to imagine BP's Lord Browne being as easily won over by a charm offensive from Pharrell and Jon Bon Jovi.
The truth is that real change will only come from Live Earth if the organisers and the musicians that play make sure that they are equipping their audiences with the tools to become activists - to keep the pressure up long after the day is over. Most importantly, those audiences must uses their voices and their votes to give our politicians a mandate to hold the worst carbon offenders - most of them big business - properly to account for their actions, both in the UK and abroad.
To a large extent, that reaction could be the right one. For all the criticism it received at the time, Live8 was instrumental in putting global injustice on the map for people who weren't usually interested. It made it clear that there were some partial solutions easily available to us and that such crippling gaps between rich and poor weren't an inevitable fact of life. And, most importantly, it made explicit the connection between the actions of our most senior politicians and the lives of people living in some of the poorest countries in the world.
It's this political arena where Live Earth has a harder path to tread. The people with the power to make the biggest difference here are big business and the governments that regulate them (or don't). Businesses often have the worst carbon track-records and access to the resources to develop the technology to stop that from being the case. But they also have profits and shareholders interests' to safeguard.
The equivalent of the organised "anti-green" (or at least, anti-regulation) lobby didn't exist for Make Poverty History - our leaders were only too happy to be seen frolicking with Bono and Bob in the run-up to the concerts and G8. It's hard to imagine BP's Lord Browne being as easily won over by a charm offensive from Pharrell and Jon Bon Jovi.
The truth is that real change will only come from Live Earth if the organisers and the musicians that play make sure that they are equipping their audiences with the tools to become activists - to keep the pressure up long after the day is over. Most importantly, those audiences must uses their voices and their votes to give our politicians a mandate to hold the worst carbon offenders - most of them big business - properly to account for their actions, both in the UK and abroad.
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I agree. If you look at the outcomes of Live 8 (which admittedly i am no specialist on), they seemed to go further on aid and debt relief, rather than on trade – where the sectional interests lie.
On markets, regulation and social outcomes i thought this article by Simon Caulkin was spot on:
"'The main constraint on the market's ability to increase the supply of corporate virtue is the market itself. There is a business case for CSR, but it is much less important or influential than many proponents of civil regulation believe…If companies are serious about responsibility, as Vogel says, they need to do more than go 'beyond compliance' themselves; they need to push governments to raise compliance standards, level up the playing field and eliminate the free riders"
In other words, for real progress we need enlightened businesses to be more than enlightened – we need them to push for enlightened government too.