I thought this essay deserved a wider audience. I have added some paragraphing to aid readability but changed not a word. Reprinted with permission.
– John A
The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. – Ross McKitrick
Earth Hour: A Dissent
by Ross McKitrick
In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.
Here is my response.
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.
Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.
Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases.
Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.
The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity.
Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.
People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.
I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.
If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.
No thanks.
I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.
Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph
h/t to the Bishop Hill blog for bringing this essay to my attention
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Excellent essay.
Apparently the watermelons are promoting another ‘Earth Hour’ at 8:30 PM on March 26th (Saturday). Might be a good idea to move this post up to the top then. Last year I turned on every light in the house (and the outside ones, too), as did some of our neighbors.
/Mr Lynn
What an absolutely brilliant riposte, it says it all, absolutely all.
Amen. The boobs and their shame-and-blame game are not fooling anyone anymore.
I am amazed by the calls to rip down nuclear power and replace them with windmills. Are people so uneducated to know they are demanding to be removed from the grid?
Thank you Professor McKitrick, a very erudite treatment of the modern day luddites.
What would our world be like if they existed back in time?
Alarmist: Thomas what is that machine you’ve made?
Newcomen: It’s a steam engine.
Alarmist How can that possibly benefit anyone?
Newcomen: We will be able to pump water out of the mines more efficiently which will allow us to dig deeper. Also to pump sewage and clean water.
Alarmist: Anything else?
Newcomen: Well, one day it may be adapted to transport people and goods.
Alarmist: Whatever, any other bright ideas?
Newcomen: The dynamo hasn’t been invented yet, but when it is we will be able to create electricity to power homes and industry.
Alarmist: Enough. Newcomen the machine, unless you didn’t realise uses coal and you know that coal is destroying our environment. Cease now with all this poppycock and stick to what you are good at, my sister needs some iron gates, she will call in about four to discuss.
For some reason, that ain’t going to happen. Why not switch off everything for a whole day? Why not show real solidarity with the third world by sharing their energy poverty?
Sanctimonious is right.
Great essay.
What people who adore Earth Hour are saying is that the modern way of creating energy is sustaining the world’s population at its present level…so let’s create less energy. I suppose it’s less electorally toxic than forcing people to be sterilised, coercing women into abortion and rebuilding death camps.
This should be read and re-posted by everyone who hasn’t shut down their computer, and everyone who hasn’t shut their mind.
“Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. “
I love this!!
Thank you Mr. McKitrick.
Observance of Earth Hour is nothing but a religious ritual, and that is guaranteed by the right to freedom of worship. I have no more problem with those who observe the ritual than I have with those who observe any other. I do not share their faiths, but cannot prevent them from worshipping their gods.
But, there are two undesirable consequences of the ritual:
Those who observe it are also likely to promote lobby groups that pressure elected vote-hungry governments to cut back on power generation, especially fossil-fuel power generation, thus succeeding in reducing our supply.
If enough of them get this madness and shut off their power all at the same time, the resulting spike could damage the grid. And when they turn it all on at once, the overload could be as damaging. At that level of participation, it looks like sabotage.
We may want to organize an Energy Hour on March 26th, an hour of celebrations and thanksgiving to electrical energy and what it has done for the mankind and us.
Everyone should try to increase the consumption of electricity during the hour at least by a factor of 5: note that it would only cost a fraction of a dollar. I wonder who would win. 😉
Every time I see misguided people like DeChristopher pulling their hypocritical stunts I feel the same way. To them I add my voice, “You go back to nature and leave the rest of us alone.” Not only do I like the way things are, but I also think we could make them a lot better by widespread deployment of nuclear power.
(How many people have been harmed by the damaged reactors in Japan? Not so many. Allowing people to build homes and cities in a potential tsunami path is infinitely more harmful.)
**Applause**
Hear Hear!
I think the true green believers should embrace earth hour so much that they remove their websites. After all, accessing their nonsense uses electricity in the form of servers, router time, etc..etc.. I’m all for freedom of speech, but if by your own speech you condemn your best methods of spreading your speech, well that’s nearly the definition of insanity.
My Florida apartment went for two different weeks without electricity because of tropical storms hitting my city several years ago. It was torture. Soaring temperatures, 100% humidity, no air-conditioning, and no lights. Fortunately, I was able to pack up my critters both times and escape to a relative’s air-conditioned house.
Anyone who celebrates a lack of electricity is either a fool who doesn’t have a clue, or a masochist who enjoys suffering.
Back to Nature, huh? I can’t even stand picnics.
I detest Earth Hour for the western prententiousness of it all.
Rajenda Pachauri (IPCC) gave a presentation in India last week, at Amrita University.
http://web.amrita.edu/news-images/2011/pdfs/pachuri-amrita.pdf
“1.6 billion people lack access to electricity, 25% live in India.”
According to the Indian Times he also said this at this presentation:
“Given that human actions are increasingly interfering with the delicate balance of nature, natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and tsunamis will occur more frequently, said Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, director general of TERI, and the chief of the inter-governmental panel on Climate Change.”
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-14/coimbatore/28687815_1_harmony-green-drive-renewable-energy-sources
Tsunamis are by definition caused by events like earthquakes…
The Amrita University, omit ‘earthquakes’ from their quote, or has the newspaper made the connection and added it?
“Human actions are interfering with the delicate balance of nature,” he added. “Floods, heat waves, water scarcity, tsunamis will become frequent in the future.” Rajendra Pachauri, 11th March 2011
http://web.amrita.edu/news/news-content.php?id=7&ct=10
“h/t to the Bishop Hill blog for bringing this essay to my attention”
Hey, that was me! Where is my hat tip?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-notes-to-wuwt-2/#comment-622372
REPLY: Happy to give you one if JohnA says he read your comment. He may have simply seen it at BH independently. It happens. Thank you sincerely in either event. – Anthony
Like others on here, I celebrate Earth hour every year by turning on all of the lights, and preheating the oven to 350 F.
Let’s all join in the fun and see if we can offset the actions of all the technophobes who still find it okay to use their iPhone (let’s hope they unplug their chargers while they aren’t charging!).
——
http://earthhourblog.posterous.com/go-beyond-the-hour-this-earth-hour-with-the-6
The 60+ iPhone app will integrate with the recently launched ‘Beyond the Hour’ platform – an online platform that captures and allows individuals, governments and organisations across the globe to share their actions, and acts as a tool to showcase and inspire environmental commitments.
The app allows you to search for the acts of others for inspiration, add your act and share it with the world, with the following features:
* Add your action
* Add a picture to every action from the camera or the photo gallery
* Embed video from YouTube
* Find acts by searching for recent, popular, country, and quickly find your own acts
* Use the phone’s location-based services to filter actions based on location and proximity
* Share each action using popular social networks, and by SMS and email
* Add an Earth Hour reminder on your phone’s calendar
Since they started this nonsense, I have put it on my calendar and ensured that every light in the house and out of doors is turned on. Talk about shining a bright light on ignorance!
Kudos to my fellow Canuck’s essay. Ever since Earth Hour appeared, my way of dealing with it has been to leave all the lights in the house blazing, with curtains wide open for the world to see. Many were not amused when told (indicated by a sad glance at the floor or their shoes), although a few did get the point.
Apart from the sheer inanity of the concept, laid out nicely by Prof McKitrick, the whole exercise reminds me of the state-engineered mass behaviour shenanigans we were subjected to in commie Eastern Europe a lifetime ago. Demands for arbitrary, “symbolic,” and otherwise pointless, useless and ultimately degrading gestures such as Earth Hour are the hallmarks of tyranies, or at least wanna-be tyrannies. One way to turn otherwise intelligent humans into dull cogs is by getting them used to going along with stupidities without daring to even asking why. Today we are urged to volutarily “show solidarity” with Mummy Earth, tomorrow we’ll have earnest teens knocking on our doors to politely suggest that we should turn off those lights “like everyone else,” and the day after tomorrow, they’ll be lobbing brick bats through our windows for non-compliance.
If knew what the diff between AC and DC is, why on earth we need a positive and a negative, or how to effectively manipulate physical objects like wires without strangling or frying myself, I’d assemble a big, 100 Watt incandescent bulb-lit sign reading “Happy Earth Hour !”
Thanks a million Ross, couldnt have said it any better. Sure nice to read about someone who is highly educated and has common sense as well! I read and see way to many highly educated people talk total nonsense/stupidity about the way we live and our environment. Maybe these cool guys like Ross we dont hear much about because of our lefty braindead media. Making energy more expensive just for the sake of it is madness!!
BANG!
Nice.
Perfect, Ross! I shall copy, post & distribute this.
others might be interested in this dissenting T-shirt:
http://www.zazzle.ca/light_up_your_life_tshirt-235072970493487076
a new design available from “bluewalrus” at zazzle.com
(this image can be put on any item – t-shirt (as shown), hat, mug, etc.)
I have already said everything about electricity that needs to be said.
But if you prefer just seeing, here it is. Bosnia, 1902.
(Elecric power plant in Jajce at night by Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar)