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
True earth-hour rebellion would be putting up christmas lights and turning them on… something like this:
http://crossfitseven.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Griswold-House-700px.jpg
“Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness.”
Bullseye. Thank you Ross. This is the 21st century version of witchcraft supersition.
So, if we all turn off all our lights and electrical appliances and hide in the dark for one hour each year we will solve what exactly ?
Watermelons who wants to do that should be forced to do that for at least a month during the winter season in the north.
Not being allowed to use any modern technology, heating, electrical appliances or transport, they will certainly change their mind.
I spend a lot of my time working in and on behalf of sub-Saharan Africa. Believe me, not having electricity is a major issue. While hotels and large institutions can afford generators, normal people can’t. Instead, when they need light they burn unhealthy smoky oils for a flickering flame.
Nobody wants to live like that. They want the benefits of what electricity can bring them. Such as power in their health clinics that would allow them to treat patients after dark, for example!
Generators are more expensive than grid power. Every hour they run their businesses on generators is making them less competitive in the world. Is that the aim of those who would deny them electricity?
Ah-ha! Just figured out why Earth Hour will never be expanded to throw us into the Dark Ages for an entire day. All but a few fanatics would reel back in horror and demand that they burn kittens, puppies and their grandmothers on nuclear piles at their front lawns just to keep the juice flowing.
“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”
Thanks, Anthony. That did cross my mind, but the opportunity for a humourous remark was just too good to ignore.
I already have two hat tips from WUWT, by the way. Still, my trophy cabinet looks bare. 🙂
As I keep telling Aussies in support of this, the power stations are still running, generating power. You simply cannot turn off a power plant like you can turn off your lights, and visaversa. They simply don’t get it. The emissions are still, well, emitted.
Luboš Motl (March 17, 2011 at 7:32 am) wrote
“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.”
Something of the kind exists, Human Achievement Hour. Celebrate what man’s intelligence has created!
Reminds me of the futile gestures here in England by those supporting the miners during the 1980s miner’s disputes, by placing a lighted candle in the window of their gas centrally heated house – I would not allow it in ours, much to the reprobation of our public sector neighbours. We were one of the few remaining houses in the street with a working coal fireplace.
The lights were on, but no-one was in.
There will be half a million people demonstrating in London’s Hyde park on the 26th of march against the right wing governments attempts to sabotage the NHS under the guise of economic necessity. If the light all go off, half a million people groping around (or maybe just bumping into each other), could be interesting. Maybe we should just do it in broad daylight.
Right now there are 180 men going into the gaping maw of the Japanese Reactors
(Bushido,truly) they need electricity, to power pumps. Earth hour is irrelevant
and empty-I plan to turn every light on in my house run my dryer,and fire up the old F-150….
Well certainly no one wants to return to earlier times when we lacked the immense benefits of electricity. But it is wise for a short time every year to remind ourselves that this incredible enterprise we have constructed, our economy, is the real “abstraction”. The benefits we enjoy are not without cost, and we need to be aware of this. Earth Day serves this purpose.
It is also prudent that we celebrate our successes, as you say. But let us not blind ourselves to the reality that this same success will be short-lived if we over-use our dwindling resources, pollute our environment and destroy vital, life-supporting ecological processes. We are doing this now and the whole planet is affected by our actions. Earth Day is intended to remind of this fact.
My brother-in-law, a Professor at Rutgers, an expert in the physics of surfaces, is now in India. Guess what? India is too vast and poor for a network of electrical power lines. So they are working like mad on another solution: solar cells for every town. THEY seem to think that bringing electricity to the masses is important. How do you make better solar cells? Pick the brains of our best and brightest, that’s how.
I would put money down that India does not celebrate Earth Day.
By the way: without GM crops, India would really be hurting.
And nuclear energy will only help the urban areas of India, again because of the distance limitations.
It is just another fraud perpetrated by the phony one-worlders, who preach but do not practice. It is okay for energy limits to be imposed on others, but they will still travel in their own jets, own several houses, and use up resources. Check how much energy Bono uses in his travels. Or how much of a carbon footprint Al Gore has in his little place. Any of them.
Fantastic! I agree totally..
I guess we all do here.. but it is commonsense.
One small point though..
..there is no such thing as fossil fuels.
And that makes Earth Day even more ridiculous.
John A., thank you for sharing this. To Prof. McKitrick, I say, amen. With half the population living in cities, humans are becoming more clueless about nature and are turning their fantasy of it into a religion.
Bravo! A brilliant summary.
I would like to applaud Mr. McKitrick for his excellent essay on the importance of cheap electricity. Cheap energy is quite possibly the single most important factor in the unleashing of mankinds potential. It is the cornerstone as he so eloquently elucidates.
This piece should be trumpeted from the roof top of every free man’s home during the most repugnant “earth hour” along with running every single light in their household.
P.S.- Many thank yous for all your work & efforts in the battle against the CAGW madness.
Where can I get a “I dissent Earth Hour”-button for my website ?
Excellent!
It seems even more profound when you think of what the people of Japan are going through. Some of those people don’t have a choice to do without electricity.
Hugh Pepper says:
March 17, 2011 at 8:12 am
“Well certainly no one wants to return to earlier times when we lacked the immense benefits of electricity. But it is wise for a short time every year to remind ourselves that this incredible enterprise we have constructed, our economy, is the real “abstraction”. The benefits we enjoy are not without cost, and we need to be aware of this. Earth Day is intended to remind of this fact.”
It would certainly remind me of how precarious our civilization is, of how the flick of a switch could turn us back to the dark ages. In such moments of melancholy introspection I would then insist that governments provide cheap and reliable electricity for all. Contemplating a world without electricity would make me aghast at the idea of replacing proven technology with the vagaries of wind.
But that’s just me.
Justr about says it all. Who wants to live like the North Koreans or even the poor Africans. We want cheap electricity for ALL when demanded and DDT for those areas that suffer from the diseases that were prevented before Carson’s ill researched book Silent Spring.
Outstanding
A breath of sanity – Quite raised my spirits for the day…..!!
Well done Ross and thanks to John A for posting it here.
Do you imagine if our ancestors living in caves had a earth hour where they would extinguish their fires? If they did that we would not be here to enjoy the fruits of the human intelligence and ingenuity.
I’m 80% in agreement. Anyone who wants to live without electricity deserves to, and I’m four-square behind their right to do so. As long as they leave MY electricity alone. I like electric lights and refrigeration. Even the Amish have sufficient sense to use technologies they deem to be non-disruptive. (I think our greenies and techies could possibly both learn a lot from the Amish)
That said, there appear to be just about enough recoverable hydrocarbons to support 9 billion humans through the end of this century at decent levels of energy use — 200,000 btu per day per person in temperate rural areas; 400,000 per day in industrial countries; 600,000 per day in very cold climates. And we really ought to leave a few of those resources for future centuries. They might come in handy.
I think there is sufficient evidence already in to write off wind as more than a minor contributor to future energy mixes. Not that wind turbines shouldn’t be deployed. They’re fine up to a level that no country other than perhaps Denmark yet comes close to. But they can never really power more than a fraction of a society where every human has access to adequate housing, food, water, medicine, and some luxuries.
So, I think we should be pouring research money into solar, nuclear, and fusion. The human race needs some mix of those technologies. It does not need deus ex machina solutions from people who have neither the skill nor desire to practice basic addition.
So, I guess it’s okay if I don’t wear green on St. Patricks day?