That was all well and good, but U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan knew that if he wanted to draw attention to the project, he'd need stars. Leading spokespeople so far have included Bono, David Bowie, and Wyclef Jean, and expected to perform at the various venues on concert day are Mary J. Blige, Bush, Busta Rhymes, the Corrs, Counting Crows, Celine Dion, the Eurythmics with Annie Lennox, Jewel, Michael Kamen and Orchestra, George Michael, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, Puff Daddy, Sting, Robbie Williams, and others. In the U.S., the concerts will be shown on MTV and VH-1, and 110,000 tickets will be sold for the Giants Stadium and Wembley Stadium venues. No small tasks, those. It's one thing to have Madonna make a heartfelt speech about helping people, it's another thing to be told that the debt burden of the world's 20 poorest countries could be covered by the cost of one Stealth bomber.
Population growth is a special focus of the site.
NetAid organizers point out that the world population 100 years ago was 1.5 billion, and as late as 1974 it was still just 4 billion. In October, we pass the 6 billion mark in a headlong rush to 10 billion in the next five or six decades. As you might imagine, most of that crowd will live in less-developed countries, and the ramifications could be dire, to say the least. Sure, lots of money will be raised on October 9, but the real value of the day will be in promoting the Web site as a central clearinghouse for information about the initiatives that the United Nations Development Program is undertaking. Makes sense to me.