Saving Lives With Songs

This Saturday, it’s time to raise awareness about global warming, carbon emissions, energy efficiency and the rest of it, with Live Earth. Massive death bringing gigs in London, Hamburg, Sydney, Shanghai, Japan, Johannesburg, Rio De Janeiro, and the USA, Turkey apparently as well, will unite the world and make us change our lightbulbs and put felt in our lofts.

I could be the cynical type and say, “oh, but they’ll be flying to all of the gigs in planes and helicopters”, and, “oh, but what about all of the energy that’s used by the hundreds of miles of cables, the on stage equipment, the lights, the satellites, the televisions of 500 billion people watching”, etc. etc. etc. we could go on all day couldn’t we? It’s a joke in all fairness, that we still feel that we can change the world by making a giant carbon footprint this weekend.

The list for our very own concert in Blighty, is as follows:

Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Bloc Party, Corinne Bailey Rae, Damien Rice, David Gray, Duran Duran, Foo Fighters, Genesis, James Blunt, John Legend, Kasabian, Keane, Madonna, Metallica, Paolo Nutini, Pussycat Dolls, Razorlight, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snow Patrol, Spinal Tap and Terra Naomi.

The thing I’m most dreading this weekend is James Blunt. When he comes on stage, and he plays “Your Beautiful”, if he introduces the song by saying, “This songs for Planet Earth”, I will unscrew my head and batter the TV screen until it smashes from the force of my balding detached cranium.

Several of the above acts must have a genuine reason to be playing, other than to save the planet. Genesis? Not sure if that’s with or without Phil Collins. They getting back together, are they? Are they announcing a new tour, are they? Do they have a new greatest hits compilation coming out? What’s with Duran Duran popping up everywhere as well, yes, we get it, her name’s Rio, she dances on the sand, great, fuck off please.

Paolo fucking Nutini, his chip shop owning parents have already done enough to destroy the planet with their battered Mars bars and pollutant friers, without him going on about wearing new shoes all of the time to make himself feel better. Horrible, selfish, exploitative cunt. Aye, let’s get a load of orphans in a sweat shop to make you some new crocodile skin loafers, it’s cool, as long as it’s going to make you happy Nutini, you twat.

So, possible new album? Possible new tour? Possible greatest hits? It’s practically all of them isn’t it? The whole event is about playing your hits, so when we do get a twat like Johnny Borrelle saying “this is a new one”, I’m going to be less than pleased.

But all of the shameless self promotion aside, imagine the CFC’s emitted from the tonnes of deodorant used by Madonna on the collosal stench of stale sex emanating from her worn out, practiced on undead vagina. It’s a shame that Sting is in the USA as well, I reckon he could have produced all of the energy needed with a tantric sex orgy to fuel the entire gig.

The only solution I can think of is looking to China and India. The fastest growing areas, producing huge amounts of carbon. I propose that humans should carry around cards stating their energy efficiency, just like buildings. The ones most guilty, along with the oldest member of each family (they’ll be dead soon anyway), should be rounded up and mixed together with a load of carbohydrates and suet to make a giant dumpling then put in an incinerator to create energy for all of us. Eye for an eye and all that, imagine how much energy these little yellow types must hold, after all the rice they eat.

I’m sick to death of it, personally. I reckon it’s too late. Do we really want to stop the joy that an Eskimo will have when he finally has to stop wearing tennis rackets for shoes and saw circles in the ice to catch fish. Let the ice melt man, give him a kebab, he’d be over the moon. They must be sick to death of wearing those parka jackets and looking like Liam Gallagher.

For my part, I have given up. I’m of the opinion that if the world is going to take me out, then I’ll take it out with me. The only power I have left now in the grand scheme of things, in my sad pathetic excuse for a life, is red LED’s. Every single TV in my house, I switch them all on and then put them on standby with my remote, because that red light emitting diode is the only power I have left in this world. That red LED is my Hal 9000, I’ll walk round my sitting room, dressed as a space man, talking to my red LED, plotting with my red LED, thinking of other machines we can plug in, putting on my food processor to create a new red LED, caressing my kettle, I will be Lord of the LED.

Just the same as when we have a hosepipe ban down south, I like nothing better than switching every single tap on in my house, switching the shower on, pulling out all of the plugs, then going out for a good 8 hours to chop down trees and burn fuel, before coming back to switch it all off. Fuck them, they’d do it to us.

Even if we get through it all and I end up having kids, I’m inevitably going to have to pay the price for my previous energy efficiency sins, so I’ll probably have to ram a wire and a plug up my sons arse and make him jog on the spot so I can watch Lethal Weapon II on ITV2, occasionally cracking him over the head with my walking stick and coughing phlegm on him, telling him, “go faster, the scene with Patsy Kensit’s right tit is coming up”.

We all know mobile phones will eventually get the blame in all of this though, don’t we? Let’s face it; they get the blame for everything else. Mobile phone gave me a brain tumour, mobile phone gave me ear cancer, mobile phone up my arse made me come. So what do we do, when a “new study” declares in 10 years time that mobile phone use is killing the Ozone? It’ll definitely be too late by then.

Maybe it is all just a sick PR stunt, Gore massaging his ego, becoming a hero, re-igniting Bush vs. Gore, and coming out as the popular one. I’ve got no reason to doubt that Gore’s intentions are worthy and noble, but it’s all still a bit sickening. He’s been campaigning about this stuff for years, so it’s not a fashion, he probably is honest, but I doubt very much that many of our popstars are.

Nevermind, it’ll all be over till next year, when we have Flood Aid, for the people in Hull, when we have a total washout next summer. I can just imagine Paolo Nutini in a little rowing boat, with his new shoes on, saving drowning pensioners, and then bargaining for their lives by forcing them to knit him some even newer shoes, the twat.