Live Earth or Dead Earth?

The debate, like something else large and round and under our feet, is getting hot out there over the Al Gore's Live Earth worldwide concert on 7.7.07. The word thrown around the most is "hypocritical," especially of the artists who fly around on jets all over the world to line their pockets (and satisfy music-starved fans like myself), but more so on the event itself and the "carbon footprint" (a term getting more and more use lately) of 9 concerts all over the world promoting green initiatives and cutting carbon emissions - all great goals - but I wonder how much emissions were generated simply lighting one of the stages, not to mention the gas emissions from the cars of the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of concertgoers who came to see such acts as Duran Duran, The Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, Bloc Party, Snow Patrol, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Madonna (who apparently rocked London like no one else), etc etc etc etc etc...

Articles:

Live Earth - Was it Any Good?
BBC's Quickie Live Earth Article
MTV News piece, with quickie Al Gore interview.