The vast majority of scientists now accept that Al Gore is a man-made phenomenon. There is the odd stubborn sceptic who still believes him to be a natural occurrence that appears during periods of intense sunspot activity (creating an effect known as Al Niño). But on yesterday’s evidence it looks as if we must all change our lifestyles if we hope to escape his worst effects. We might already be too late.

The Live Earth concert – behind which the former US vice-president was the driving force – certainly marked some kind of tipping point for me. If ever anything similar is broadcast again, I will have no hesitation in turning off the television to save electricity, remembering of course not to keep the set on stand-by.

Instead, I will consider the following question: where did we suddenly get the idea that the social problems of the world could be solved if only Madonna got more work? And wasn’t yesterday just another example of the overweening self-importance of modern music and musicians?

What I felt was a disillusion that first struck me exactly 30 years ago in a field just outside Glastonbury, where I was celebrating the seventh day of the seventh month of 1977. As the calendar is man-made, this date had no significance whatever. But back then I was an amateur hippie. Let me explain why I never turned professional.

I stumbled across a picture of that event recently on the internet. It’s a crowd scene, obviously shot from the side of the stage. The first thing you notice is a couple near the front. They stand out because she is naked and he seems to be on his way to audition for the part of Christ.

What I noticed next came as rather a shock. It was me. I was right there in the front row with my embarrassing 1977 hairdo – looking like the side view of a badly thatched cottage – and a cheesecloth shirt. I remember that cheesecloth with a shudder.

The summer festival circuit – Live Earth, Live 8, Glastonbury and all the rest – are huge operations. But 30 years ago free festivals were a shambles and proud of it. I seem to remember it wasn’t entirely clear where the Glastonbury Fayre was being held. We just had to follow the clapped-out VW camper vans and hope for the best. There seemed to be no organisation and nobody seemed to know who was playing and when. There must be about 300 people in that crowd scene. Not one of them is smiling. (See for yourself on www.herenow.be. Click on 1977, Page 2.) My most vivid memory of the day is the naked flesh. Especially the women. I was 19 at the time and we didn’t see much in the way of naked flesh in Somerset. But nudes or not, that day marked the end of my brief dalliance with long hair, Afghan coats and cheesecloth shirts. Especially cheesecloth shirts.

It had previously occurred to me – after watching two bearded men solemnly throwing a Frisbee for an hour and a half at a free festival in Stonehenge – that the much-vaunted 1960s counter-culture did not add up to very much. By the time it reached my small town in the late 1970s, the hippie message probably amounted to little more than the following beliefs:

1) If you sit crosslegged on the ground, people will take you seriously.

2) Only fascists have short hair. And possibly people who’ve had nits. Mostly fascists, though.

3) Drugs make people really, really interesting.

4) And should be available on the National Health Service.

5) Three hours rolling your own cigarette is a morning well spent.

It was the political and cultural philosophy of The Young Ones and Citizen Smith. How could we have fallen for it?

What did for me in the end was the boredom and the self-obsession. First, the boredom. You have not known the true meaning of dreary until you have listened to a tentful of people discussing – very slowly and in painstaking detail – the difference between Moroccan black and Lebanese. To relieve the boredom, you might wander outside to see what’s on stage: and you discover that somebody is in the middle of a five-day guitar solo.

Worse, though, few people could match a serious hippie for self-absorption. In theory we were supposed to embrace the world. In practice we were considerably less promiscuous. We’d rather have had our heads shaved than embrace Tunbridge

Wells, for example. Estate agents were probably out, too, along with managers of banks and building societies. Soldiers. Police officers. For people who loathed the suburbs, we seemed to have a very narrow, suburban view of life.

The counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s is supposed to have swept away the values of the 1950s. In fact, the values of the 1950s simply went with the flow and adapted. The structure of society is roughly the same: it’s just that status has been redistributed. There is certainly none of this equality nonsense at something like Live Earth. A rigorous hierarchy of passes ensures that ordinary folk do not pester any important rock stars. And see how festivals like Glastonbury organise themselves into small dormitory towns: a tented suburb from which commuters travel to the central stages. I’ve even seen families – mum, dad, two kids – fencing off their plots and relaxing on plastic garden furniture.

By the way, the long-haired youth who sat next to me in 1977 is now a police inspector. I wonder if Mr Christ got that job.

Jeremy Clarkson is away

Times Recommends

• Bank charges hit us for being human
• Sorry, Father, thou still shalt not steal
• The shed where Santa’s failures go to die