U2 Frontman: BONO-fied Eco-Champion Or CO2 Hog?

Some people love him and others...well, perhaps not so much. Why the turned up noses for Paul Hewson, otherwise known as Bono, one of the most prominent rock band singers of the last several decades? It could be his confident, larger than life persona, the fact that he has aligned himself with a seemingly dizzying array of charitable and eco-causes (and isn't afraid to speak out about them when opportunities present themselves) or his tendency to use his enduring rock star status as a springboard for pontificating on the sorry state of the world. Or maybe, just maybe it all boils down to this -- people instantly hate the wildly successful few who do more with their bazillions of dollars than merely just selfishly squander them on multiple estates, vehicles and worldly possessions. Jealous much?

The 49 year old has certainly earned his millionaire status the hard way -- by writing, singing, recording and touring with his band U2 for the better part of 30 years -- and while plenty of other musical talents are content tucking themselves away in their cliff-poised castles so they can quietly dabble in oil paints, photography or the like, Bono has carved out a charitable path for himself since the early 80s. From the educational program he developed for World Vision and his efforts to combat chronic poverty via ONE to the development of the Product (RED) campaign (the profits of which help to fight malaria, AIDS and TB) and his three Nobel Peace Prize nominations, he's hardly been a slouch. In fact, the singer was recently awarded the #5 position on The Daily Beast's list of the top celebrities with the most charitable impact for 2009 -- specifically, through his anti-AIDS, anti-poverty ONE Foundation, Bono has generated an annual impact of $3,598,313 through a combination of personal donations as well as press, television and internet campaigns.

Despite his many positive cultural and philanthropic contributions to the world, guess what the press chose to focus on this past summer? Not his locally sourced and produced organic cotton, eco-fashion line Edun, the profits of which are used to help create sustainable communities in Kenya, Mauritius, Peru, Tunisia and India. They weren't terribly interested in the fact that his Killiney, Ireland mansion is poised to be fitted with a subterranean wood pellet boiler house, either. As soon as www.carbonfootprint.com calculated that his band's 44 concerts scheduled throughout 2009 would emit the same amount of CO2 as all "four members traveling 34.125 million miles from Earth to Mars in a passenger plane," people were out for blood. Ohhhhh, the self-righteous yet clearly hypocritical Bono and his planet-wrecking ways -- U2's year+ tour will purportedly log in 70,000 air miles, create the equivalent amount of waste as 6,500 typical consumers in an entire year and most horrifically, the amount of carbon produced will require 20,118 trees to offset it. And yet, this is the cost of doing international business. Lest we forget how much CO2 was generated at the Copenhagen Climate Summit -- Reuters stated that it was enough to fill 10,000 Olympic sized swimming pools or "5,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide" along with an additional "40,500 tonnes created by attendees' flights to Copenhagen." Should we get into what the President's carbon footprint is?

Conveniently, the part time rock star and full-throttle charitable representative who spends his spare-spare time writing pieces for the New York Times referenced the infamous COP15 debacle in his January 2, 2010 column, stating that it was hardly "surpris(ing) that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now." Recognizing the sensibility of every person deserving an equal right to pollute (as opposed to just the rich nations), he went on to explain that it would be ideal if an "average Ethiopian could sell her under polluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university." Considering that Bono dedicates untold hours and personal funds to the greater charitable good, aren't his actions in essence offsetting the production of his own band's excessive CO2? Whether you like his music or not, doesn't making the world a better place via tireless charity count for something?