Tonight is "Earth Hour", the misguided Marxist bit of enviro-nonsense by which people who have achieved great things become ashamed that their lives are so good, and decide to live in darkness and fear like their lost great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents did.
There's a lot of ink spilled by the foolish promoters of this cause this time of year, and a prime example comes courtesy the Deccan Herald in India.
What began as a local lights out event in Sydney in 2007 has since spread to 7,000 cities and 162 countries. Now called Earth Hour, the event on March 28 implies voluntary switching off of lights for one hour that day starting 8.30 pm local time everywhere. Not that this will translate into huge sustained savings but what this aims to do is focus attention on the deleterious effects of global warming and the urgent need to adopt a sustain-able model of development.Not that this will translate into huge sustained savings, or small sustained savings, or even small sporadic savings. So sure, none of what its promoters claim the event is intended to motivate actually occur, but you feel like you're helping, and isn't that enough?
Well, no, of course it isn't, but that's the sort of critical thinking skills that are notoriously absent in the minds of those who promote or participate in Earth Hour. These are the same folks who think there is an "urgent need to adopt sustainable development" (there isn't)
Fossil fuels are the closest to running out of supply, though it may take a few more generations to happen.Now we're up to a few more generations???? Remember when the planet's danger was "imminent" and fossil fuels would run out by the 80s? Now even the environmentalists concede we have generations left to use oil gas and coal!
The switching off of electricity, in a sense, also shows a feeling of empathy towards those people and countries which to this day do not have enough electricity and are forced to live a large part of their lives in darkness. In other words, it is an attempt to sensitise millions of people, especially in affluent countries, of the struggles their brethren in poorer nations have to experience every day.You might somewhere find a few Earth Hour devotees flogging this dead horse, but not many. We can't be in sympathy with them while we're striving to emulate the horrible conditions in which they live.
Just compare this claptrap...
The involvement of civil society, NGOs and governments for a common cause has made Earth Hour a programme a huge promise, one that can even arrest the negative changes to the world’s climate. Sounds ambitious, but then, that is the potential of Earth Hour....with the immortal words of Ross McKitrick (narrated by Rush Limbaugh)
For an hour tonight, do what I and Kurn and so many others are doing: turn on all your lights to celebrate Human Achievement Hour.
