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
I would go one step further and say that energy is *everything*. It defines “modern”. Before that we had animals for power, including slaves. We would still use them if there wasn’t something cheaper and better, courtesy of other energy sources which make machines possible.
The city dwellers may romanticize the pioneers, but remember that for the pioneers it was man *against* nature, and nature often won.
If you want to save electricity, just do it. If you make a big deal out of it with events like these it just looks like intimidation.
There was a reason pre-Christian culture holidays revolved around light and warmth. From the solstices to Easter and the harvest, humans knew that light and warmth were good and that cold and dark was bad.
It’s too bad the Enviro[snip] aren’t as advanced in their thinking.
Personna Smokey the Astroturfer says: March 17, 2011 at 11:39 am
But I feel no guilt. If their despotic governments instituted reforms including minimal government interference, free trade, property rights, low taxation, and a fair legal system, within one generation you would see a South Korea-type society emerge from the previous North Korea-type poverty.
Even for an invented personna you are very obnoxious.
The west has had cheap abundant fuel to grow with. We have squandered this resource and continue to do so – just read the comments here. In the UK just using modern wall warts < 1 watt instead of the usuallo 3 watts would save a small power station. Now swith off all those set top boxes when not reuired and thats another power station. Now switch to efficient lighting and thats another power station.
Drive a small efficient car, cycle to work, take only one flight holiday per year.
Insulate your house, stop draughts, reduce the remperature during the winter and increase it in the summer by a degreeC.
All this is feasible without loosing your freedom and without going back to the dark ages. Is this so much to ask? Wind turbines generate 20% rated power on average over the year. This means you save oil/gas for the future – is this bad?
I thought personnas were supposed to research before posting. How can you say that ALL lack of industrialisation and wealth is caused by despotic governments – where is your proof. Perhaps you need to bring on line another of your personnas to back up your dross.
Some aboriginal peoples prefer to be left with their lifestyle. Some may wish to progress to westenrn “civilisation” but because we have squandered to cheap fuel will not be able to reach their aspirations.
Douglas DC says:
March 17, 2011 at 8:11 am
Paul Westhaver says:
March 17, 2011 at 9:16 am
Could you please explain how firing up an F150 and an F250 will consume more electricity from the grid?
R. Gates,
“And right now, electricity is being brought into many 3rd world countries, village by village, and it isn’t big grid power, but small solar power systems that are truly making a difference in these people’s lives.”
I’m sure it does make a difference, compared to what they had before -which was nothing – and so long as it is donated by kind Western nations. What’s not to like?
The only problem is, these solar panels will not come close to powering a modern industrial economy.
Did I tell you about the solar panels the council put up on the roof of our leisure centre? It covers every square metre of the very expansive roof. At a rough guess, I’d say about 150 to 200 sq metres. That sort of serious solar panelling should provide some serious power, right? The authorities have kindly provided a real time display of the ‘power’ generated. I check the figure every time I go there. So far, it has varied from between 2.3 and 2.9 kw at 12 noon. About enough power to boil a kettle. Hmm. Watts up with that?
It strikes me that this ‘Earth Hour’ is very similar to the self-flagellation practiced by certain religious groups. It accomplishes nothing but makes them feel holy. How can we in the UK show our (non) support????
thefordprefect;
All this is feasible without loosing your freedom and without going back to the dark ages. Is this so much to ask? Wind turbines generate 20% rated power on average over the year. This means you save oil/gas for the future – is this bad?>>>
Yes, it is bad. The wind turbines provide power that fluctuates wildly, and provide for no storage mechanism when excess power is produced. That means that conventional power stations must take up both the fluctuations, and have reserve capacity available. Conventional power plants cannot respond efficiently to either, it takes hours to ramp up or ramp down a power plant properly, and wind gust fluctuate in seconds. The result is a drop in efficiency on the part of the conventional power stations that eliminates the value of the wind power, and reduces the lifetime of the conventional power plants substantially.
As for your contention that all of these things you listed could be accomplished without losing our freedom, may I ask how it is that will happen? The honour system? 100% voluntary participation? 90%? 75%? What do we have now? Oh, almost 0%, and after “earth day” fades from memory (like the next day) it will rise to…let’s round off to three decimal places… 0%.
The only way you get significant adherance to such standards is for a central authority to enforce them. The reason its not called “enfreedom” is the “force” part.
I do not comment much. However, Ross McKitrick, I would like to be your neighbor. Rational thought seems in such short supply these days. Refreshing.
The real “deniers” are the warmists. They want to deny plants their CO2, third-world countries the right to lift themselves out of poverty, and humans from procreating.
Yet the warmists have no problems using their computer(s) late at night in a brightly lit office, TV’s (for their news and other entertainment), car(s) for driving to work, air transportation for their conventions, staying warm or cool using a modern heater or air-conditioner….all the while drinking their Co2 laden soda pop (or beer). All things based on foundations they abhor the most. Funny how they won’t deny themselves.
My wife remarked that it is indeed all about guilt and tokenism. The people who participate in this futile gesture need to visit the east coast of Japan and see Earth month in operation.
My students will be reading this essay next week. Can’t wait. 🙂
R. Gates says:
“You apparently love giving your money to the big utility companies…and eventually to me. Keep it up…”
I know Gates is trying to be insufferable, and succeeding. This is the same Gates who preaches, based on zero evidence, that CO2 is melting Arctic ice cap – but who will not give up his multiple cars. There’s a word for that beginning with H, and it’s not “hero.”
Sort of like a junior Al Gore.
JoJo: “Electricity is a limited resource”? It is limited by your lack of imagination.
My neighbor of 97 recently told me electricity was one of the greatest things in her life. Her family had been using a barrel in a creek for a refrigerator and with the advent of the real thing, it changed her life.
Smokey says:
March 17, 2011 at 4:47 pm
R. Gates says:
“You apparently love giving your money to the big utility companies…and eventually to me. Keep it up…”
I know Gates is trying to be insufferable, and succeeding. This is the same Gates who preaches, based on zero evidence, that CO2 is melting Arctic ice cap – but who will not give up his multiple cars. There’s a word for that beginning with H, and it’s not “hero.”
Sort of like a junior Al Gore.
_____
No, I just think it’s funny that people would willingly give more of their money to big power companies than they have too and would reject the notion of living smarter and keeping more of their hard earned money.
I’m joining in the Bright Lights Big City movement on the 26th. Loud music too. I might even run the sprinklers as long as all the snow is gone….just for effect.
R Gates, I pay for my energy and have a family of 4. I am the Dad and I regulate the thermostat as all good Dads do. I constantly turn off electrical things in my house whenever I feel they don’t need to be burning. But at times I like to celebrate and my Bright Lights Big City movement means I get to light my house up like an X-mas tree (didn’t want to offend) on the 26th. It’s worth the extra $1.00 on my bill this month. And I breathhhhhhhh co2. Mmmm mmm mmm. Love the stuff and so do my plants. And don’t get me started on beer..
Let me encourage late-comers to go up and read Hoser’s entire post: excellent reasoning, and right on the money. The key to the New Industrial Revolution (besides getting government out of the way) is energy: cheap, abundant energy.
Let the Obammunists drive up the cost of fuel, which is their stated aim. If they think last November was an aberration, just wait until gas and heating oil hit $5 or $6 a gallon. Then maybe we can elect not just “dumb-as-rocks” Republicans, but Americans willing to take the steps necessary to put this country back on the track to growth and prosperity.
/Mr Lynn
“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. ”
I’m looking for a word here…. is man “supernatural” “unnatural””subnatural”???
NICE OP-ED, ROSS!
One of the first things I read about AGW many years ago now was what I remember as a Preamble to something IPCC, in which it said their aim was to lower carbon emissions to zero. No, that is not a typo. I wish I could find that again. I filed it somewhere and can’t find it anymore. It may not have been IPPC, but I sure recall reacting with, “WTF? They can’t seriously have that as a goal! If they did, they’d take mankind back to 1780, with the world being an agrarian society! We can’t possibly support 6 billion people with an agrarian society! We’d have to let 3/4 of the population of the world die!”
My second thought was that these people certainly attend The Church of Humans Are Evil And Only Animals And Plants Have the Right to Be Alive. They are the authors of the “documentary” propaganda in which they show what the world will be like 100 years after humans are all gone.
This is nothing more than self-loathing, the idea that we are all worthless because Bambi’s mother got shot in a fictional cartoon movie. These people can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Yes, that is the definition of insanity. But many people buy into it.
They can’t remember that 40 years ago – before the U.S. passed the Clean Air And Water Act in 1970 and just after Lady Bird Johnson got us all in the U.S. to stop littering – that the air in our cities and the trash in our streets was THEN an abysmal indictment of us as caretakers of the Earth. Since then major parts of the world have done a VERY good job of reducing pollution; car emissions and coal furnaces were a major part of the earlier pollution. Many tens of thousands of scrubbers were put on what we used to call “smoke stacks,” and which now emit almost no smoke at all. If anyone wants to point at the odd stack that emits water vapor as steam and indict us, that person doesn’t know what they are talking about. And the water quality worldwide is ridiculously better than at that time. Our water treatment plants that were built due to that law have improved our lives immensely. NOW most of our cities use their riverbanks to draw tourists, not for effluent from factories. (Do we have it all figured out yet? No, but we have made great strides.)
As to Pachendra’s comment that “…human actions are increasingly interfering with the delicate balance of nature,” he doesn’t point out that much of that effort to “interfere” is in reducing pollution. Interference goes both ways, Rajendra…
Kevin G noted on
March 17, 2011, at 7:48 am:
“The app allows you to search for the acts of others for inspiration, add your act and share it with the world….”
……….
People are asking us to turn off our lights for an hour … and also are promoting to those of us using computers (which probably use electricity) … a scheme for downloading from a web server (which probably uses electricity) … an app for our iPhones (which probably use electricity) … with which we will take photos and video and upload ideas back to the server for further viewing on further computers.
Not to save the world, but to share with it.
These are the Igor Stravinskys of cognitive dissonance.
“Thefordprefect” wrote, “Some aboriginal peoples prefer to be left with their lifestyle.” That’s like saying some homeless people prefer to be dirt-poor and to live on the streets. A few might have this “preference,” but they either suffer from mental illness or wish to avoid even worse alternatives.
There is not a single example of an aboriginal population anywhere in the world which at any time tried to consistently avoid the material benefits of civilization. Most may prefer to be left alone, and few are interested in low-tech drudgery which always earns little, and like the rest of us, because yes, they are human like us, they want their societies and lives to be stable. Many, like the !Kung of the Kalahari avoided civilization, but their understanding of civilization was confined to unpleasant contacts with impoverished and violent herders and farm hands.
“Thefordprefect” continues, “Some may wish to progress to westenrn ‘civilisation’ but because we have squandered [the] cheap fuel will not be able to reach their aspirations.” Goodness. First of all, why put the word “civilization” in scare quotes? A civilization is a complex, organized and socially stratified urban culture, not a state of someone’s manners or ethics. Anyway, which “cheap fuel” have we squandered”? Firewood? That is the most inefficient, low-grade and if you care about such things, high carbon fuel. Petroleum products and nuclear? Obviously you need a civilization to extract those and make them useful, and we have ways to go before running out. What holds back people from progressing technologically is the problem of not having access to better and cheaper forms of fuel. Wood is not it by far, and if anyone had to go and find wood, cut it, split it, cure it, stack, protect it from theft, and then watch it go up too quickly in smoke, they’d know what I mean. But now, in addition to bucolic fantasies about cheap and easy fuel, we have a new impediment: the “green” humanitarian, who thinks pristine peoples should be locked in “their” environment, to be given only silly trinkets like solar panels, hand-pumps, some old tools and a few bucks in micro-loans for them to make and sell cute baskets.
tom s says:
March 17, 2011 at 5:57 pm
R Gates, I pay for my energy and have a family of 4. I am the Dad and I regulate the thermostat as all good Dads do. I constantly turn off electrical things in my house whenever I feel they don’t need to be burning. But at times I like to celebrate and my Bright Lights Big City movement means I get to light my house up like an X-mas tree (didn’t want to offend) on the 26th. It’s worth the extra $1.00 on my bill this month. And I breathhhhhhhh co2. Mmmm mmm mmm. Love the stuff and so do my plants. And don’t get me started on beer..
____
Very glad for you…and the power company will gladly take that $1.00 from you (very likely several times that amount by the way), and I’ll gladly take my cut of that $1.00. Thanks for playing, come back soon…
Like many folks, my IRA contains a significant fraction of utility stocks. They pay better than average dividends. I bought them much cheaper than they are today, and I don’t have to lift a finger to get the benefits. I am Mr Big Utility.☺ Which makes way more sense than depending on excessive taxpayer subsidies that scam other taxpayers.
Maybe when solar is a mature technology I’ll consider it. But I’m skeptical of the seemingly snake-oil sales pitches I hear, for something that depends on intermittent sunshine and requires maintenance. If solar was viable it wouldn’t need subsidies. Thus, it’s a scam on the taxpaying public.
thefordperferhick
You first, get back to me in say 400 years.
I know how my great, great, great, grandfather Mangus Colorados Apache Chief lived,
do not care to go there, be my guest.