“Earth Hour” starts tonight. Yawn.
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. Better yet, turn on all your lights to celebrate, as Ross says below.
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
Just add to the inanity of the stunt by WWF, note the header from their website this year:
Apparently, you should turn off your lights, but encourage computer use by putting the picture above on your Facebook page…sorta cancels out, doesn’t [it]?
The real reason behind WWF’s “Earth Hour”? Cold. Hard. Cash. Note the big red donate button to extract funds from the easily duped.
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Yep I can see a bunch of green Whinnies setting in the candle light with their Iphones thinking how much greater they are then us ?? ;>)
I hope that they have turned off their iphones too !! Oh, wait, now will they be able to tweet each other about not using electricity if they do that ?
Perfect EARTH HOAX time!
You notice that they chose a time of year when not much power is being used for heating or aircon? Probably not luck. There’s a reason American students don’t riot in the winter – it freezes up the TV cameras.
Imagine if people tried to do Earth Hour by turning off their heating in mid-winter. They might work out why it’s such a stupid idea.
I agree with the idea of have an energy-related ‘Earth Hour’ in that we should celebrate our progress as humans sharing this beautiful planet.
The symbolic turning off of lights for an hour, and talking about access to energy is helpful for raising awareness that some people do not have access to modern energy and are the poorer for it. That awareness is good for children to develop. Real progress is shared progress.
Nothing about ‘Earth Hour’ saves the Earth. The Earth does not need saving, does not need mankind and does not care. The Earth is an natural formation upon which we depend. Saving humanity from our own stupidity means not fouling our own nest, literally. We understand that.
Part of saving humanity from our own stupidity is raising awareness that there are meaningless symbolic or pointless genuflections, forms of ‘virtue signaling’. The idea is that signaling one’s virtuous acts is a salve for the guilty hearts of those who accept the critique that being comfortable comes at the expense of the ‘Earth’.
The Earth doesn’t have ‘expenses’. It also doesn’t have income. Loud, aggressive fund-raising by certain organisations does create income for them and expenses for the public. Observe how the ‘output’ of this expense consists largely of ‘feeling better about the damage you have done to the Earth.’ That is nothing more than an indulgence paid to a a self-appointed representative of a false god. Guilt money. Don’t participate.
To be effective in sharing the progress we have made, Earth Hour should celebrate those initiatives that lift people living in a state of energy poverty to a state of adequacy, not indulge our fantasies that we could live in energy poverty ourselves. We can’t, and we won’t, for as long as we can prevent it.
Spend Earth Hour doing something practical for those in need. Plan together to bring light into their dark world. A good example was the Terrawatt Prize sponsored by National Geographic which gave cash prizes to projects that brought light and or power to areas that were not likely to be connected to the grid in the next ten years. The number affected had to be fifty homes at a minimum. Wonderful ideas were submitted and many continue without winning because they were viable without subsidy. All it took was to be challenged to do something good. That is a good use of an hour devoted to the upliftment of our fellows.
“I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there” Classic.
They should call it North Korea Solidarity Hour !
I look forward to Earth Day every year just to read Prof. McKitrick’s timeless essay once more.
I would add one more humanity changing benefit that electricity has brought us. Only since we learned how to harness the chlor-alkali process through electrolysis have human beings had safe drinking water at the turn of a knob. We don’t even imagine how much power goes into keeping nasty bugs out of the tap.
I think I’ll go turn on some lights!
My mother, born 1905, Oklahoma Territory, replied to an advertisement for the “Whole Earth Catalog” with these words:
“I lived like this when I was a child. I have no desire to return to it”
I replied above under ristvan @ur momisugly 10:41; see note there. Here is the link, again.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/church-of-the-sacred-carbon/
I had the unfortunate experience of having my natural gas turned off for 9 days in December this year. Luckily my heat is oil or I would have been in big trouble. I could not cook or bake or heat water or dry clothes for that time. It was a real inconvenience. I used a hot plate to cook and managed just fine. To not have electricity for that long stretch of time would be disastrous. Most of the elites in this area have put in uninterruptible gas powered generators. They don’t worry.
I am celebrating with a big outdoors fire!
What a coincidence! So am I. Come on over. Beer’s on me!
Nice. Greenies demonise people. Without people the world would be a better place. Really?
The first link is busted. Google search “Ross mckitrick electricity” for some link serendipity.
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/yes-virginia/68502/
That was good. We need some new Saints. The unheralded toiling gnomes and dwarves of our great industrial age. There is a magic in electricity, a get-down-on-your-knees roar in jet engine tech, a worshipable egalitarianism in the internet age. The real barbarians shun all this and would have us back in caves, under their green boot.
Earth Hour? My lights are turned off for most of, if not more than, 16 hours every day!
I lived in a village in southern Mexico for six months. No electricity, no indoor pluming. Used a well built indoor wood stove built out of mud. I was allot of work for my wife!
Carrying water from wells is the main activity of women in the undeveloped, ie unelectrified, world.
The Earth Hour meme is simply a manifestation of virtue signalling.
Definition:
Virtue Signalling –
the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the apparent moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.
Ross’s McKitrick’s explanation above vividly shows the moral bankruptcy of the Earth Hour idea. What is lacking on the Left is critical thought on the issue of energy use and its sources in today’s modern world.
That satellite photo verifies that the Seoul-Incheon area is nearly one half Korea’s wealth.
Looks like the Korean fishing fleet off the coast makes up the other half.
The one white dot is where the very special piggies live.
I stopped caring about it, a long time ago.
I still celebrate earth hour sort of like happy hour. I crack open a brew and raise a toast to Maxwell, Tesla and all the other scientists and engineers who make cold beer (and lots of other neato stuff) possible.
I always turn on every light in the house.
Next year I want to hire searchlights and buy a few tanks of CO2 to release into the atmosphere.
Burn some tyres, some cans of old sump oil and a few aerosol cans, Pat.
That should do the trick!
I would like to donate to an advocacy watch group on this day.
Thank you for the reminder for this abominable forgettable ceremony. In an earlier post I noted that I would be turning on lights and lighting my RR lantern to liberate some CO2. In lieu of the RR lantern, I will be firing up my 2-mantle gasoline lantern. That will liberate not only CO2, but also some Thoron (Radon-220) to throw the Earth Hour types into conniptions.
Why This Scientist Won’t be Attending the ‘Science March’
And those who do turn their lights off forget, or rather are ignorant of, the fact the power stations are still spinning and still burning fossil fuels.
The math doesn’t seem to add up.Despite a mild winter which saw Ontarians conserve electricity, hydro rates are set to increase next month because we saved too much energy.
It defies logic but that’s the reason given by the Ontario Energy Board for the 2.5 per cent increase announced on Thursday. And it seems no matter how much we save, more rate hikes are likely on the horizon according to one energy expert.
“Conservation drives higher rates,” said electricity expert Tom Adams, who says the weather plays no role in the cost of hydro.
“Cold winters, rates go up. Warm winters, rates go up.”
But a spokesperson with the Ontario Energy Board, the group that sets the rate, says it has set costs that need to be covered.
“This winter was milder than expected, we consumed less electricity and collected lower revenues than forcast. So this time we have to make up for the difference,” said Ceiran Bishop, manager for electricity rates and prices.
http://www.citynews.ca/2016/04/15/why-are-energy-prices-going-up-this-summer-were-to-blame/
duh!
http://s28.postimg.org/bfijguaq5/stepping_on_rake_cartoon.png
It’s an electric bill catch-22. 😐
It also happened in Canberra in the last drought. The revenues from water consumption were lowered so much the company had to raise the rates.
Sounds a lot like the banks. Interest rates down so they upsell anything. Of course, in the banks’ case they don’t care if you need it or not.
At least Hydro actually provides something, overpriced though it is.
Once I tried turning on all my lights during Earth-Hour, mainly to irritate a neighbor. But there were so many of them that I had to give up after about 40. It suddenly struck me that I was also irritating myself.