Live Earth to reach two billion world over

Al Gore has recruited Australian-based Cathy Zoi to run the Alliance for Climate Protection he set up six months ago.

"It will be the first great note in a worldwide song demanding change that will be heard on every continent in every time zone," Zoi says of the concerts.

"Post Live Earth, the Alliance for Climate Protection is undertaking a three- to five-year campaign to educate people from all walks of life that the climate crisis is both critically urgent and something we can solve."

One such action is the Live Earth's outreach program, called Friends of Live Earth. Some 6000 people have applied for kits to run their own events simultaneously with the concerts.

A key part of Live Earth will be to get people around the world to sign a seven-part pledge that commits them to lobby their governments.

This is much more than a feel-good exercise: the event organisers plan to capture a massive database of people who can be mobilised in future campaigns - and be asked to donate.

On the night there will also be six calls to action, says Zoi. One is to install four energy saving light bulbs in their home. If the event is as big as organisers hope, they will be able to quantify the impact and use it in future publicity.

clipped from www.smh.com.au WILL the biggest global media event in history be enough to convince George Bush and John Howard that climate change is an urgent problem? The former vice-president turned climate change campaigner, Al Gore, certainly hopes it will provide a good nudge along the road to requiring nations to reduce greenhouse gases by 90 per cent by 2050. The Live Earth concerts this weekend, which will be broadcast worldwide on television and the internet to reach more than 2 billion people, begin in Sydney and cascade around the world to Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, Rio de Janeiro and New York where Gore will be. For the first time, China will participate. There are two special events: from Toji temple in Kyoto and from the British scientific base in Antarctica. "The climate crisis requires a global solution," said Kevin Wall - the man behind Live Aid and Live8 - and now this event. "Live Earth is using an unprecedented media architecture to reach a global audience."