Al Gore is FULL of CO2
If a tree gets planted in the forest and no one is around to give Gore credit, can it still reduce CO2?
In the press release about the S.O.S (Save Our Selves) series of concerts, Gore and company announce that, “Live Earth alone will engage an audience of more than 2 billion people through concert attendance and broadcasts.” The sponsors are hoping that 3 million people will attend in person for one of the seven concerts held around the globe. For the sake of the polar ice caps, let’s hope the event promoters are being wildly optimistic. But for the sake of showing how egomaniacally deluded Gore is, let’s assume that the numbers are obtainable.
In 2003, the Rolling Stones became the first band to undertake a “carbon-neutral” tour. To achieve this feat the band estimated that the total emissions for everything—from the power requirements for the venue to the transportation to the concert—came to 13 kg/CO2 per fan. If Gore is able to find three million people to attend in person the fans would produce 39,000 metric tons of CO2.
Then there are those who will watch it at home on a TV or computer, both of which use about 200 watts of energy per hour. Let’s also assume that everyone is a conservationist and watches only one hour of the 24 hour concert. This would reduce the amount of energy used to 400 billion watts of energy (2 billion people using a 200 watt source for one hour).
In order to convert kilowatts of electricity (400,000,000 kw) to kilograms of carbon dioxide we multiply by .43, which gives us 172,000 metric tons of carbon produced simply by the viewing of this concert. Add that to the concert goers and you have roughly 200,000 metric tons of CO2 produced by this event.
To put those numbers in some kind of perspective consider:
The concert will produce more CO2 in one day than Zimbabwe produced in any month in 2003.
The concert will produce more CO2 in one day than the total daily fossil fuel emissions for Austria, Chile, Finland, Greece, Iraq, Kuwait, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, the Virgin Islands, and a dozen other countries combined.
The concert will produce more CO2 in one day than the entire nation of Afghanistan produces in a year.Presumably, Gore and company will buy carbon offsets to make up for the pollution the event will create. Since it takes an acre of Douglas fir trees (and 50 years of growing time) to offset 1000 tons of CO2, Gore will need to plant 200 acres of trees to make up for his concert.
Reasonable people might ask why they don’t just skip the concert and use the money saved on logistics and promotion to plant twice as many trees? The Zen-like response: If a tree gets planted in the forest and no one is around to give Gore credit, can it still reduce CO2? Apparently, the answer is “No, it cannot.” For the inconvenient truth is that Al Gore cares more about being viewed as an eco-savior than he does about actually acting in a way that might help us “save our selves.”
