Rockers' Egos To Save The Planet

"Artists like us," writes Live Earth participant John Mayer today, "don't just get together to each play 20 minute sets every weekend, you know. We're also usually pretty sensitive about the order in which we take the stage, and I've got no problems with my 5:12 PM set time. The Police, Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, and yes, myself and my dumb face are all openers for the true headliner - the power to literally change the world's mind."

Before I write what's on my mind about Mayer's thoughts, I'd better say right up front that he warns me not to.

Now isn't the time to dissect the rights and wrongs. (If you're hoping Live Earth doesn't work, you have a lot of soul-searching to do.)

I'm hoping Live Earth doesn't work.

Oh, the dopey stuff's fine. Use one square of TP if you want. Trade in your Civic for a Prius, toss a few thousand bucks out the window and get a mile or two more per gallon if that chimes your clock. And by all means, turn off the extra lights -- I do, all the time. Have incredible wives, daughters and employees all forgotten that light switches work two ways?

It's the insidious, destructive part of Live Earth that I hope fails miserably. The Big Vision part of the Live Earth vision will ruin the economy and keep poor countries in poverty: radical pledges to cut carbon emissions, bans on new coal-fired power plants, mandated cuts in oil and gas use.

These are not bad ideas on their face, especially Islamofascist-strangling reduced reliance on Middle Eastern oil. Of course, strangling the jihad-funders' economies would be easier if we had coal-burning power plants to fire up the electric cars and all. And that's the point: When human will and gauzy hope get ahead of human technology, bad news is always the result.

But don't count on Mayer and his ilk to think this stuff through. In one of the most overtly idiotic homages to feel-good over do-good, Mayer urges Al Gore:

Mr. Gore, for six hours, you have the collective ear of a generation. ... This is your big moment to show us all how easy it can be. ... Make the call to action feel like music makes us feel; that sometimes the only way to make it through the tough times in life is to bob your head to the groove and float it out. (That's hippie talk. The audience will get it, I promise.)

Cool. I'm sure the Sun will note our head-bobbing, groove-floating approach to all this and dial back its radiation. I'm sure the ocean currents will talk hippie-talk right back at us and realign benign. And I'm sure that biggest greenhouse gas of all, the one we've got nothing to do with, water vapor, will start feeling like music makes us feel and un-greenhouse gas itself.

Groovy.

By the way, Mayer signs off with:

As a side note, I'll be signing autographs at the Roy Rogers restaurant at mile marker 112 in Secaucus.

This will work.

Sure it will, even if the Roy Rogers is a few miles outside Secaucus. Hey, that's not far. And if you're in NYC or Philly, it's just down (or up) the road. So what the heck, let's hop in the car and cruise on over.

After all, we won't be generating a carbon footprint near as big as Mayer did, what with his amps and mikes and speakers and lights.