Al Gore

Al Gore’s grandiose exercise in hypocrisy has to surprise even his most vocal critics (“It’s Party Planet,” July 8).

Whether it is flying in private jets to various venues or straining the electrical grid during July, these holier-than-thou, “do as I say, not as I do” types are the face of the current panic over climate change.

Their message would be far better received if they stopped pointing fingers from their mansions and limos, and started to realize that their personal excesses make a joke of the whole exercise.

Hopefully the concert gift bags were stuffed with carbon offsets. Anthony Varriano

Staten Island

I found the Live Earth concert baffling. I lived through a golden age of rock ‘n’ roll, when congressional hearings subjected Dee Snyder, Frank Zappa and others to be grilled by Gore on their song lyrics, resulting in parental-warning labels on albums.

Yet this is the same Gore who took the stage with socially irresponsible individuals like rapper Kanye West? Is it OK to have songs containing racial and sexual epithets as long as they pretend to care about the environment?

How can such blatant hypocrisy be tolerated? Where’s the outrage? Ken Robinson

Ocean, N.J.

Watching the vast success of the concerts, where 2 billion people came together for a single cause, made me think about the person who helped organized the event – Gore.

While Gore has brought us together, his opponent in the 2000 presidential race, President Bush, has divided us on almost every public-policy issue imaginable.

How ironic it is that it was Bush, not Gore, who ran as a “uniter, not a divider.” Steven M. Clayton

Ocean, N.J.

If we saved all the energy generated to power all the instruments and light and sound systems of all the concerts across the country, we’d really be making a strong contribution toward global warming.

Wasting energy to save energy? Only in the mind of a liberal. William J. Dillon

Brick