An open letter to the Celebrity World

OK, so I didn't watch any of Live Earth when it aired, but I really don't need any celebrities to tell me how to be an environmentalist. It is so insulting to listen to a bunch of really rich and wasteful people leture me about the things I can do to save the earth. What a bunch of hypocrites. And I am insulted that they think we are too starstruck to notice how hypocritical they are.

Now I am not against celebrities using their fame for whatever cause they want to publicize. I applaud them for getting our there for AIDS, cancer, orphans, of whatever is dear to their heart.

But I don't need someone with a mansion, or several houses in different places around the globe, telling me to conserve. I don't need Madonna telling me to conserve when I recently read that she purchased her fifth house in London.

I don't need Cameron Diaz to tell me to turn off the shower while I shave my legs (!!). Cameron, I shave my legs while sitting on the edge of the tub, not even while taking a shower at all. See that way, you can use water sparingly. And by the way, you are a terrible actress and I avoid any movie with you in it.

These are the people in one of the least eco-friendly occupations. Making a movie is tremendously wasteful, when things are blown up for a 3 second shot, when elaborate sets are constructed, when costumes are made that are used for only one scene, when 300 people jet off to some remote location to film a few scenes. The last thing they need to do is stem on a pedestal and tell the rest of us to use less toilet paper! Especially when the person telling us this (Sheryl Crow I believe) is using a three bus convoy to drive round the country delivering her message. Sheryl, if you really cared you would get in a car yourself and drive it around, sans entourage.

Not that celebrities are the first people to do this, given the abundance of idiomatic phrases to describe this behavior, like "Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk" or "Do like I say, not like I do" or "Put up or shut up".

I guess I should be glad that more attention is paid to the environment, but this is almost doing more harm than good. First of all, people get resentful when they are patronized like this. They might think why should they sacrifice when Celebrity X has three houses across the globe, or five jets, or their own private golf course. Secondly, it makes people think that if they do do these small things, it will be OK. People, we are going to need a lot more than using less toilet paper to prevent the oncoming ecological disaster. We might even need people to only own one house..... or one car.... or no car.