This monkey was one of the few viewers of Live Earth here in Italy. On a blisteringly hot day (something that is not particularly unseasonal – for what its worth), I chose to stay indoors and watch bits and pieces of Al Gore’s extravaganza, and after a brief and remarkably unscientific straw poll after the event discovered I was the only one to have taken such a dramatic and ecologically unsound choice (not only the power behind my computer and monitor, but also the continuous whirring of a fan).
There was much to grumble about with Live Earth – private jets, smug superstar moralising (Joss Stone and her ‘plant a tree – it only takes five minutes’ for example), the lack of any concrete political manifesto, and the underlying suspicion that much of the event was geared to pushing the man of the moment, Al Gore, into running for President. At the same time, concentrating information on a global level, proposing models for change (however vague) seemed like a worthy ideal – and there were some great musical moments (the collaborative efforts put on by Damien Rice and David Gray, and Madonna and Gogol Bordello for example).
It would have been a good idea had the event truly been global in scope – instead in countries like Italy (A member of the G8 with 58million people, many of whom spend their time flipping the coin between driving to work in an SUV or on a shapely scooter), little effort seems to have been made by the organisers to reach a large public. The event was broadcast on the smallest of national broadcasters MTV and La7, and pre-event publicity was next to nil. Would it have been so difficult to have local (green hosted) websites in different languages? Perhaps global warming is just an anglo-american problem?
In truth, far more in the public eye last week here was the launch of the new fiat 500. A spectacular launch party was covered extensively by TV, News, Radio, and all the major newspapers & magazines.
Michelle Sera, in a piece as part of la Repubblica’s coverage of the launch pointed out one of the reasons that the new CinqueCento has the power to grab the nation’s imagination. “The relief to be able to return to measuring the productive capacity, the creative energy, the economic health of a country against an object, against something made (or robo-made), and no longer against the smoke-filled and worrying moving about by nebulous financiers, of the virtual economy and the immaterial that has dominated the business climate for the last two decades”[1]
The original CinqueCento has an affectionate place in the nation’s history – a small car born in the 1950s to fill an important gap in the market. It made a virtue of necessity, being cheap and small, and became one of Europe’s best loved cars.
Fiat could well do with another massive success, but there seems to be little of that imaginative and practical design work that made the first car so much a part of the Italian economic boom. At a time when Climate change is a mainstream argument, launching a new small cheap family car – when there are already dozens of others on the market – seems to be, like Live Earth, missing the point…
[1] “Il sollievo di poter tornare a misurare le capacità produttive, la freschezza creativa, la salute economica di un Paese a partire da un oggetto, da un manufatto (o robot-fatto), e non più dai fumosi e inquietanti spostamenti della nebulosa finanziaria, dell’economia virtuale e immateriale, che hanno dominato il clima degli ultimi due decenni.” – Michele Serra – Repubblica