http://www.alternet.org/environment/56323Live Earth Concerts: Pop Goes the PlanetBy Cole Moreton and Geoffrey Lean, The Independent. Posted July 9, 2007.
Performed on seven continents and watched by two billion people over the weekend, the Live Earth concerts spoke directly to the disastrous effects humanity is having on our planet's ecosystem. - snip -
Live Earth took place on seven continents, over 24 hours. During that time five million people travelled by plane -- and nearly 5,000 people died as a result of air pollution. More than 83 million barrels of oil were consumed -- and the Antarctic lost a kilometre from its melting ice shelf. The population of the world increased by 211,000 -- and the forests of the world decreased by 20,000 hectares.
All this happens every day -- symptoms of the global crisis that Live Earth hopes to help to stop. And the true picture is even worse than we fear.
- snip -
Live Earth hoped to beat that inertia by challenging members of its unprecedented global audience to reduce their own carbon emissions and campaign for serious political action. "The Earth is a blue ball covered with a very thin layer of lacquer, within which the air, water and living beings exist," said the former US presidential candidate Al Gore, who also put the concerts together. "This fragile layer is all we have. It is our only home -- and we owe it to our children and our children's children to protect it."
But the new research in 161 countries -- the most extensive study ever made into humanity's impact on the planet's production of life, powered by the Sun -- shows that the Earth is already in serious trouble. In some parts of the world humans are using up far more than 25 percent of plant life for food, fuel and other needs. In Western Europe we gobble up 40 percent of the earth's natural bounty, in Eastern Europe 52 percent, and in India a staggering 63 percent. About half of this is accounted for by growing crops and another 40 percent in forestry and grazing domesticated animals.
"This is a remarkable impact on the biosphere caused by just one species," said the German government's chief adviser on climate change. The US Academy's study, actually carried out at Austria's Klagenfurt University and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, is backed by some of the world's most distinguished experts. Dr Nathan Moore of Michigan State University called the results "alarming". Professor Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, said: "With millions of species sharing the leftovers, it is hard to know how many will be squeezed out of the game."
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