Straits Times 14 Dec 07;
'Can celebrities save the world? It rankles. What kind of place are we in when people are looking to Hollywood or celebrities to save the world? Where are the people who really should be stepping up to the plate and leading us? Where is the leadership? Red light. Emergency. Help. This is something that has been flashing for the past 40 years.'
Entertainers perform at Nobel Peace Prize concert to draw attention to global warming
OSLO, Norway - Leading entertainers performing on Tuesday to honour Nobel peace laureates Al Gore and the United Nations climate panel said they hoped they would draw attention to global warming.
Taking the stage near the end of the concert, the former United States vice-president called for all people to show 'the moral imperative' to face the challenge of climate change.'Let's get on with it. We can do this,' he said in the Oslo Spektrum concert hall.
He and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to document and spread the word about what he calls the 'planetary emergency' of global warming.
Before the show, American actress Uma Thurman, who co-hosted the performance with Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey, said she wanted to call attention to the warnings from Gore and the panel.
At a news conference before the concert, she said: 'The whole point is to raise awareness and communicate with everyone else in the world and share our concern for the planet.
'What we are hearing is that everyone needs to get very much involved with climate. It's coming to us. It's coming to a theatre near us, very, very near us.'
The Nobel Peace concert, broadcast worldwide, attracted such singers as Kylie Minogue, Alicia Keys and Annie Lennox. Melissa Etheridge, who won an Academy Award this year for the song I Need To Wake Up, which was featured in Gore's environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth, also performed.
At the concert news conference earlier, Spacey said: 'Showing up at an event like this is important because there are going to be so many young people tuning in to this concert.'
Scottish singer Lennox said the real question is what the world's leaders can do.
'Can celebrities save the world? It rankles. What kind of place are we in when people are looking to Hollywood or celebrities to save the world?' she asked.
'Where are the people who really should be stepping up to the plate and leading us? Where is the leadership? Red light. Emergency. Help. This is something that has been flashing for the past 40 years.'
