Another year, another take on Live Aid.
After worthy causes such as Live Aid, Farm Aid, Self Aid, and Live 8 comes Live Earth. A day of music on 7 continents to highlight Climate Change and some worn out old artists flagging careers (Madonna anyone?). It was pointed out to me that this was probably the worst way to address climate change since it will cause large energy usage on the day and hence release additional CO2 into the atmosphere.
Let’s do some figures….
Audience of 2 Billion
Wattage per hour of an average CRT TV (excluding sound system) : 120 Watts
(Rough) Average of number of people per TV: 3 people
Number of hours Live Earth is broadcast: 24 hours
Number of hours before people get bored: 3 hours (I know, a little optimistic)
=(2B*120*3)/3
=240 Billion Watts OR 240 Gigawatts
Now factor in the number of high wattage kettles used to brew tea in between acts and the length of time needed to do so and the number of tea drinkers in the world… Stats from the the UK National Grid shows that cultural events such as World Cup games, Who Shot JR/Phil Mitchell? and others caused energy usage spikes in the order of 2.1 to 2.8 GWatts.
So with a two hour major event (say) 2.5GW per 60 Million population
and the 3 hours per person we arrive at a figure of…
125GW in addition to the TV usage.
So far that’s 325GWatts of electricity.. Let’s calculate the CO2 emissions for this…
Lets assume we’re talking about just coal fired stations.
Using coal generates about 0.00091 metric tonnes per kilowatt hour.
=0.00091*325,000,000 = 295,750 Metric Tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Impressive eh!? I’ll leave you to factor in the cost of CO2 emissions from the aircraft all the ‘stars’ and support people use to fly about promoting this event… the energy usage of the computer systems, sound systems and light systems… The million or so people expected to attend the event have to get there somehow and most will travel by car.
.. etc etc…
Okay okay I’m being a bit mean but come on! The best way to reduce CO2 emissions is to not use electricity at all. I propose on the 7th of July that our
positive contribution to the environment is to knock off as many electrical goods as possible and to go outside and spend time in the world we all want to save in the first place! Who’s with me on this?
PS Even if the organisers use renewable energy sources for the concerts themselves you have to ask yourself why they don’t just leave that capacity in the system so as to reduce the need to burn fossil fuels.