Every year at Christmas, many newspapers reprint “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus“, this excellent essay by Ross McKittrick should be repeated on every blog on every observance of Earth Hour. Copy, paste, and share it widely. A poll on what you plan to do to observe this event follows.
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
Image via Wikipedia
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
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UPDATE: MSNBC is running a similar poll here. It seem “Human Achievement Hour” has been noticed.
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The best way to cut excessive birth rates, starvation and short lifespans, in the 3rd world is give them a reliable energy infrastructure at affordable prices.—Larry
That and redirecting foreign aid away from the incompetent and cleptocratic tyrannies and rent seekers who are in charge of every poor nation and to viable entrepreneurs, communities and institutions. We must, heavy-handledly if need be, in the much-maligned “colonialist” fashion, make these decisions ourselves and go even further in empowering liberal democratic factions until they can vote-out or hang from the lamp posts the genocidal maniacs that have been running their lives. Those will be easy to find; most are parading in colourful get-ups in the halls of the UN or vacationing in Switzerland. As things are, we are stupidly handing money without pre-conditions, proper rules, stringent inspections or biting penalties.
For all the kumbaya chanters who think Earth Hour is the “one of the best ideas in the World”, it’s time to put up or shut up. For this to be a great stroke of symbolism, it has to be effective right?
Show us the power grids powering down or those great pictures from space that were supposed to show us the power of this great symbolism. All we’ve seen so far is a bunch of government sponsored powering down of big tourist attractions, surrounded by miles and miles of normal lighting.
Show us the “success”.
I suspect that, short of coups and violent invasions, U.S. could do more, legally, but it’s hard to know just what we do now to bring down totalitarian regimes because it’s necessarily done covertly. Establishing trade with the capitalists and entrepreneurs in these countries (including N. Korea) is, I’d guess, possible, but dangerous for those who ally themselves with our country.
Fear is the path to the dark side
Peter,
For the record, I didn’t switch my lights off and barely thought about it on the day. I’m just not that active on the climate change issue. I like the science more than the politics. I also like truth more than bollocks.
Hundreds of millions of people switched off their lights for Earth Hour all over the world the past few years, and the number of participating countries/cities/towns has grown every year. In terms of reach and symbolic messaging, this is a highly successful campaign, whether people like the idea or not. The organisers aren’t backing off from it – they are touting their great success and they are indicating that they are moving on to the ‘next step’.
(Antipathetic commenters and readers here may have an opportunity to exploit the accelerating crusade by putting one of the founders in harms way – but they’ll have to play along with Earth Hour for a little.
)
It is also to the success of the brand that a broader positive symbology is being woven around it. The action is incredibly potent – think of lighting candles in a Church. The simplicity makes it powerful, and the consequence of bringing family/households together around a flame makes it even more so. It’s just a very clever, simple idea.
All the criticism of Earth Hour I see is based on reframing (misrepresenting) what the event is about – for example, that the effort is trying to make a direct impact on CO2 emissions. Certain readers will uncritically embrace such rubbish, but to a neutral, rational mind, it’s entirely unconvincing.
Comments in the thread here and elsewhere indicating a decline in the fortunes of Earth Hour are simply wishful thinking. Your attempt to make the issue no more than a corporate boondoggle are likewise unconvincing. The number of people that voluntarily participate would be a smashing success for any ‘product’.
Bravooo…
Earth Hour in Ontarion certainly was easily trumped by Human Achievement Hour….the electrcial demand curve for the province as posted on the system operator website actually looked to be up from where it was. It also was quite apparent how hopelessly inept the Earth Hour effort was the next day…. I check 8 newspapers and two television networks and there was only one ‘post mortem’ article. And it had a ton of comments under (virtually all negative to the concept).
Hmmmm…. Isn’t Earth Day coming up later this month? Sounds like some Human Achievement Day activities couild be fun this year….
Missed it. The Final Four was on. Sorry about that. Somethings really are important, you know.
Jimmy Fallon: (as reported by newsmax) “On Saturday the Empire State Building went dark for an hour to draw attention to climate change. Of course, 10 endangered eagles then crashed into the building.”
To all the quasi-skeptics who still buy into the overpopulation meme:
It’s bollocks.
Both because increased population improves living standards by providing more human resources,
AND
because it’s almost at a standstill; the always-accurate UNPD Low Band projects peak at <8bn by ~2040
AND
because replacement rate numbers are crashing world-wide. Demographers are stunned:
Depopulation by birth shortage in all the world — except the US; huge male child imbalances throughout Asia; falling lifespan in Russia.
http://www.fpri.org/ww/0505.200407.eberstadt.demography.html
It is clear, that many of the people making these comments have never spent much time in areas where people in fact live with no electricity, no water supply, and in poverty. Because, if you had, you wouldn’t be so shameless as to blatantly flaunt your wastage of these resources that you are privileged to have access to. Conserving our natural resources is what Earth Hour promotes, and that is exactly what we need to do. Earth Hour does not say that electricity and all the opportunities it has provided is wrong, it is saying that we need to stop living in excess and be conscious of the limitations. As much as you all want to overload your power usage just to spite the campaign, you could rather try to use less, pay less, and actually do something productive to help those that don’t have access to reliable and sustainable power sources.
Great post SCR! The majority of the posters here don’t care about our planet or the resources we reap from it for our comforts. They will be the people who will scream first when we run out of coal and oil.
Sorry, but IMO the Professor has it WRONG!