Live Earth picks D.C. as 9th concert venue

SYDNEY, Australia — Like the planet, Live Earth keeps changing.

A ninth venue was added Friday to the global concert series whose worldwide lineup includes Madonna, Metallica, the Police and Kanye West.

Country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will headline a show in Washington on the National Mall, about two blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The biggest names will appear at Live Earth concerts in London and the United States, with more modest lineups of mostly local and regional acts in Australia, Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil and Germany.

Live Earth was inspired and is backed by former Vice President Al Gore's campaign to force global warming onto the international political agenda by generating a groundswell of public concern.

But critics say that it lacks achievable goals and that bringing in jetsetting rock stars in fuel-guzzling airliners to plug in to amplifier stacks and cranking up the sound may send mixed messages about energy conservation.

"The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert," The Who's singer Roger Daltrey recently told a British newspaper.

Organizers say the concerts will be as green as possible, with a tally of energy use being kept. Proceeds from ticket sales will go toward distributing power-efficient light bulbs and other measures that will offset the shows' greenhouse gas emissions, they say.

"This is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever," Gore told The Associated Press recently. "The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think, will set the standard for years to come."

More than 150 artists will perform at the eight concerts. Other venues are in Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg and Hamburg. The New York venue is actually being held in East Rutherford, N.J.

In Johannesburg, four-time Grammy nominee Angelique Kidjo offered a tart response to Daltrey's comment. "Criticism is easy," she said. "And there is a kind of fashion of cynical people around us. You are cynical — what the hell are you doing to change the world? Get your butt out there. Do something."

And it is beyond time to do so, she explained.

"Climate change is visible today, we can see that now. And if you can talk to farmers they will tell you that their crops that they are harvesting are not the same as before. That for me is a wake-up call because if we cannot eat, we cannot sustain ourselves. We don't eat cameras, we don't eat cars, we eat food."