Carbon Emissions from “Live Earth” equal 4,000 “Hummer Years”

An interesting blurb buried in Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback blog on ESPN.com compares the environmental impact of the Live Earth compared to the impact of driving a Hummer for a year. We realize that ESPN doesn’t have a ton of credibility reporting on environmental news – but they enlisted help from CarbonFootprint.com.

Live Earth was the event where celebrities like Madonna and musicians such as Red Hot Chili Peppers traveled to performances around the globe to ‘solve the climate crisis.’ Easterbrook worked on the premise that half the participants probably flew in a private jet, and according to CarbonFootprint.com, a single transcontinental flight has emissions equivalent to driving a Hummer for a year. Factor in all the commercial flights, spectators, logistic support, and so on, and you have an estimated 35,000 tons of greenhouse gasses caused by Live Earth – the equivalent to driving a Hummer for 4,000 years!

Easterbrook wasn’t the only one to report on the hypocrisy, (see example 1, example 2), but he was the only one that we know of creative enough to put it in ‘Hummer Years!”