Maybe Gore should have skipped pumping up a bunch of one hit wonders from the early 00's and invented a whole cast of eco-robots that could morph from mech form to plant form.   Imagine, a robot named "Rainforest", who changes to a palm tree.   Not action packed you say?  Just wait until the evil doers start using up all the oxygen!

Michael: "I am hoping this event nucleates some sort of global political movement."  

Thanks for the mention of organizing.  I am hoping also, but with great frustration, too.  We are still like autistic hyper cats on caffeine, and there is still no one to provide the herding/organizing effort.   The best most obvious tool starts with the Net, with a single global organization.  But with competing regional, specialty organizations protecting turf and funding sources and not stepping on toes or corporate sponsors, not even minimally cooperative seems likely.  I have recently appealed to a bunch of them to try and move things along in that direction, with no success.  

Just a site offering a calendar of environmental events of all types, for everyone--globally--to submit event information to, and the world to see and plan for, would be a huge step.   This alone would help break the ice and improve communication.  I suggest there are millions who would get involved if they had more information on events as a means of physical participation.

In many ways we are the agent of our own failure.  The problem is larger than all of us--or our egos.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

The demographics of any given house party (political or not) will most likely (but not always) reflect the demographics of the organizer.  Personally, I also find a person's comfort level with going to a stranger's house for a party will increase with age.  When you're just out of college, you worry about the scene -- will I know anyone there?  Will they be cool?  But the older you get, the less that stuff matters.  You realize, "Who cares if I don't know anybody?  I'll make friends when I get there."

The demographics at the concert were about what you'd expect for the bands playing and the prices being charged -- mostly 20-35, with some teenagers and boomers sprinkled in.

Read more of my rants on global warming, recycling, and organic beer at The Green Miles!

This last weekend, two other passionate young people and myself (an 18 year old college student) organized a last minute Live Earth party with just 2 days notice.  By the time artists started taking the stage, over 30 young people and 10 not-so-young people had shown up to watch the concert, discuss the climate crisis and how we're going to stop it.

With the help of Kanye West, Smashing Pumpkins and The Police, we charged a number of people and got them excited about working for real global solutions and volunteering with us.

PS: Transformers are lame.

I've met people of all ages that don't get global warming.  One 17 year-old HS grad thought global warming had something to do with air cleaners in cans and knew nothing about CO2.  What was his school teaching?  Anyway, he had stars in his eyes for Al Gore.  Go figure.  Stars are more concrete than concepts.

So to get that swing vote, issues are needed that appeal to these 45 and up voters.  Healthcare is the big one.  Here's the best approach.

Vote democrat and you will have affordable insurance coverage in three years.   Tax dollars wasted on war and contractors will be diverted to healthcare without raising taxes.

Still working on the GHG issue as far as appeal.  Gasoline and energy prices, drought, storms, and floods seem to hold some promise, depending on if you live in a drought, flood, hurricane, tornado, or fire plagued region.

But it will go something like this.  Tax dollars going to war, contractors, and big oil and energy companies will be diverted to help you save money on gasoline and energy by investing in plugin vehicles, home energy conservation, and solar/wind power systems.  Gas and energy costs are bankrupting homeowners and leading to record mortgage forclosures.

These issues need to involve the family financial problems though.  Not just altruistic save the earth stuff. The family financial bottomline is the main concern to the voters we need to swing.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Hey, Michael: I have to agree with Miles and Chris and some others, that your sample was small and skewed.  Gatherings of this kind tend to be stratified in many ways.  In fact, the only gatherings which include a wide age range are probably those of families.  Still, it is a jumping off point to involve more people.  

I think some of the explanations why this and that did or did not happen are really stupid and uninformed over-generalizations, however.  Instead of fighting among ourselves we need to organize, to attack the Corporate Oligarchy, and celebrate the advances this event and others have provided.  

It would be interesting to hear from the under-30s (my daughter is 21 and I am 58): if Live Earth was not the best, what kind of event--of any kind--would you support?  What would be the first, best, single way to create exposure and involvement and organization?  Here is an opportunity to really think and express yourselves.  Real or cyber, festival, music, poetry, convention, monster trucks, what-evah.   Bringing them to light is the first step in bringing them to life.  Give us your best.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

I posted a similar query on my blog and one response was on the lines of "I was at home with my buddies watching it; the music was great! What do you mean I didn't participate?"

As far as I saw the house parties were not about the music, but about meeting new people, exchanging ideas, and breaking out of our disgruntled isolation. In neither case did the host offer their age or invite their friends; these were open outreach events. They worked pretty well, except for the weird age skew. There was no indication of the age the of the host in any case!

So my question, especially to young people, is not whether you watched the event or signed the pledge, but whether you went out to look for new people who might not be exactly the same as your crowd but who might share goals and interests anyway.

Do you think such a thing is a lame idea? Why?

(I learned the word "lame" from Frank Zappa almost forty years ago; it really does describe contemporary politics well though. So why not try to create alternatives?)


mt

As one wit of a certain age put it, "When I was 20, I was always worried about what people were saying about me.  When I was 40, I decided it did not matter what people were saying about me.  When I was 60, I realized that nobody had ever been saying anything about me."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

I agree with the initial observation. But I know at the Step It Up event in April in Cleveland, there were tons of young people and young families. That was what was important to me.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

I find it absolutely ridiculous to equate an apparently demographically incorrect house party (or several) with the inaction of an entire generation. Did it ever occur to you that while you were sipping martinis and critiquing Al Gore's outfit, there were thousands, if not tens of thousands of young people pounding the pavement, knocking on doors, and mobilizing people? Because I can assure you- that was the case. We were working for the organizations that your generation, and the generation before yours created.

It's not that we don't think your parties are cool, or that we're not inspired or motivated. Believe me, we love us some dance parties, we are motivated, and we are inspired. But those of us who are committed to the environment were either busy doing more productive things, or sleeping, because...well...we work pretty long hours.

I was trying to determine whether these events were unattractive to younger people, or whether my sample was just unlucky. If it's the former, I'd like to know why. (I'd also like to know what happenned in other countries for comparison, about which I've heard not a peep so far.)

We need to rethink everything that stands in the way of a popular push (not a disgruntled fringe) for change. If there's a new generation gap, I'd like to understand it and fix it.

So far I've not heard from anyone saying "I'm twenty-two, American, went to a party where I knew no-one and had a (great/useful/indifferent/lousy) time". Nor "I'm fifty, and there were lots of enthusiastic people in their teens and twenties at the party I attended."

There is no criticism implied of you or your generation if you didn't attend a party or if you didn't like the idea at all. I'd like to know whether my sample was representative, and if so, why.


mt

Your parties may have been full of Boomers and we welcome you to the fight, but youth have been organizing on this issue en masse for years. Youth Climate Activists have taken the lead in kickstarting the clean energy revolution, organizing on over 900 campuses across the country and serving as the shocktroops to pass state clean energy legislation and local, city, and state ordinances. We have sent delegations to the Kyoto Protocol meetings, served as the conscience of the nation on this issue, and sacrificed our free time during college to educate our peers and communities.

MoveOn organizes a demographic that is older, boomer, educated, and richer. We need you desperately in this fight, so I am not critisizing you and I am happy that you went to the MoveOn party. A lot of young people are not that comfortable going to a party with people their parent's age. I went to a MoveOn party in DC, with over around a 180 young people in Washington DC, at a club MCCCXXIII. It rocked!

If you want to see all the amazing things young people are doing across the country and world, check out It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement We would welcome you there!
 

Check out dispatches from the youth climate movement: http://www.itsgettinghotinhere.org/

For young people, the rockstar all-star game was the event, while for older folk it was the excuse for the real event which was meeting like-minded people.

Consequently the occasion attracted less serious young people who saw it as a frivolous entertainment event and more serious older people who saw it as an organizing event. At least, that's my working hypothesis.

That still leaves a problem as to how to overcome this, but it's not as disturbing as the initial suspicion that young people don't care.

However, we won't be able to build a global movement on age segregation.

Still looking for reports from other countries...


mt