“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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So, if I turn off my 10W LED bulb, while running my 2000W clothes dryer, someone will notice? (Other than me?)
I’ve been saving up all my most energy-intensive applications for this occasion, to include dish and clothes washer. Will also be sure to watch TV while recharging all electronic devices.
Earth hour makes the dreams of Nikola Tesla a sham and makes him roll over in this grave.
I’ll just be happy with the big, smoky assed fire I kept smoldering along all day. Happy EARF DAY!!!!!!
Ross mentions hospitals needing electricity for people with cardiac malfunctions.
The heart of all ivivg creatures that have one depends also on a continuous supply of electricity. Nature designed the heart, not Man.
This is another example of good coming from a continuous electricity supply.
Geoff
Another day, another communist based holiday adopted by the left.
I did my part. I had all my lights on and invited neighbors to come have a drink with me provided they turned on their lights. Surprisingly, virtually my entire bloc ended up at my house.
Wish I could be there!
How inventive!
If it wasn’t for WUWT I wouldn’t have even known, why give this silliness more promotion than it deserves?
All the lights are on as off. NOW !
Even running the car!
I love electricity, am extremely thankful for it and want it to stay. However, it “is” still a very valuable resource, and none of us should take it for granted by wasting it. Everything we have is a gift from God, and we shouldn’t be wasteful with anything we have been given.
My grandfather had an excess of money but was also very conservative with it, and if a light wasn’t being used, it was to be turned off. We use electricity when we don’t need to, and unnecessary lighting is especially wasteful (especially unshielded lights that waste light and electricity lighting up the sky rather than the ground), not to mention it covers up the amazing night sky God created for us. Look at a light pollution map and see how many of us now have to travel for hours to see God’s incredible night sky. Light is necessary and good, but it can be even more effective if shielded and would create less light pollution at the same time.
It is my hope that Earth Hour embraces our modern conveniences but encourages being good stewards with our resources. The better stewards we are, the more we can help those less fortunate. It is in this spirit that I enjoyed turning my lights out for Earth Hour. Plus, I really enjoyed just having candles lit. It was very peaceful. I will sleep well tonight. Goodnight everyone. 🙂
Thank you for reminding me. I managed to get the coal fire lit and all the lights on by 2030 UK time. From the look of my immediate neighbourhood I was the only one who took any notice of the whole stupid stunt either positively or negatively. Methinks the gravy train has hit the buffers.
That would be awful to clean up.
Well, there has been no mention of Earth Hour on Aussie MSM all w/e, which is a surprise. What did get a mention was demolition of smoke stacks of a power station in New South Wales that was shutdown 5 years ago.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/central-coast/munmorah-power-station-chimney-stacks-to-be-demolished/news-story/94505bde700a0d56528550f9fdb78353
Seems to still be lots of coal onsite on the left.
Only one mention of Earth Hour in Norwegian media so far as I can see, and that’s just the routine message of guilt and sin. As a local commenter put it: This night was the change to summer time, where one hour was lost, so we used that for EA.
Remember Reddy Kilowatt. He sings it well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pc-H0dyuoYU
Thank you Dr. McKitrick for an excellent but short essay.
This is nothing but a joke —— Why not then also cut back and conserve ALL energy ( much of it pure waste and useless)
Many people do that. Of course, with the added expense of useless sources like wind and solar, price is making people cut back. If it’s all renewableand actually affordable, I would guess people would just use more and more and more because there’s no reason to cut back. We can waste all we want then, if we can afford it. It’s so ecofriendly. (Yes, I am serious. Why conserve if it’s ecofriendly?) People will conserve when practical and not conserve when not. The rich will always waste, the poor will always involuntarily conserve. It’s the way human beings work and have since the dawn of time. You’re asking we rewrite human behavior, not change consumption patterns.
In addition to the Earth Hour nonsense, I was noting the effect of government interference with progress. I recently changed some bulbs to LED. After years of half-yellow light from CFLs, I have to point my lamp at the ceiling to keep it from being overly bright. I also am trying an LED with a light-sensor so it turns on a night only. My flashlights are all LED and very, very bright. Had the government stayed out of this, we would not have been subjected to the disaster known as CFLs. LED’s most likely would have grown in usefulness and decreased in price more quickly, saving the need to treat a CFL light bulb as “hazardous waste” and scaring people about mercury content, etc (One of my CFLs exploded when I went to change it out to LED. I didn’t panic, though I did wonder if it was somehow getting even with me for swapping it out!) All the mess could have been avoided and a truly useful technology—LED—would have come in on it’s own. Stop trying to push progress in government designated directions and stop trying to save the earth. It’s just making more and more messes.
There are those who will jump on a comma in order to dismiss what was in the rest of the sentence.
From a US perspective, the left here will dismiss what he said simply because they’ll say that he was, somehow, implying that a woman’s place should be shackled to domestic chores.
Mark my words.
If this excellent post gains traction, that will be one of “points” brought up to dismiss it.
Just as many would dismiss what was said by many of the greats in America’s past because they were or once were slave owners.
Where are my slippers and pipe? Kidding…
Excellent point Gunga Din on lessening the burden of women doing manual mundane chores in the house due to electricity powered appliances that allows them to work more outside the home, which raises their standard of living for the entire family. Just think of the productivity gains that will occur both for women and children and family’s when affordable electricity is available for the entire planet. This alone should be a huge celebration for what humankind has accomplished with technology. Electricity has been, and will be the single largest development in the history of humankind for eternity to come. I can’t see anything more advanced than electricity ever being developed or being replaced by something that is ever any better.
British Columbia (BC Hydro) reports it saved 24 Mw/hr during earth hour last night. At an average retail rate of about $90 Mw/h here, that was $2160 Cdn in savings over any other regular Saturday night on a population base of 4.75 million people. BCH further reports that was increased by 9 kilowatt hours over 2015, the last year it has records for. Or an .81 cent gain since 2015 Earth Hour.
http://www.wltribune.com/news/417130143.html
My only issue was with fossil-fuel generated electricity. We couldeasily lose that and still keep electricity.
Not easily. If we could, we most likely would have.
For convenience I’ve created a page to house the essay and a PDF version suitable for framing and/or sharing: http://www.rossmckitrick.com/earth-hour.html
That’s great. I already sent a link to members of our family of this article on WUWT.
I was going to turn the lights of for an hour but seeing as SA turned all their lights off for several hours I thought they made up for it, so I left the fridge door open for an hour just to help.
We should scrap not only Earth Hour with its hypocrisy but also Earth Day, which is even more asinine.Mind you, fewer and fewer people are paying any attention to either one, so it won’t be long before they’ll go the way of the dodo.
And to add to McKitrick’s honest and down to Earth article, as a trained chemist burning candles which come from fossil fuels (unless they are beeswax candles) are less energy efficient and so much more polluting (carbon particles and carbon monoxide = incomplete combustion) than using the old light globes – light generated from electricity via burning coal where many emissions are removed prior to release of gases at the coal fired power plants.
thank you Ross again for old times sake (meaning years ago now) for your dismantling of the CRU’s ‘(East Anglia) “damn lies and statistics’ to fool the IPCC and all the other gullible people that perceived (could be possible) temperature increases are in FACT TO do with CO2 – it took 2 honest, hardworking and generous Statisticians (you and the other Mc) to do this- while I’m at it – I’m a proud Mc too.
“Earth Hour” is meaningless. If you really believe that the burning of fossil fuels is bad and your power grid includes fossil fuel burning plants then go out and turn off the main breaker to house and leave it off all of the time. It is your money that keeps the fossil companies in business. In addition to turning off the main breaker avoid making use of all goods and serviced that involve the use of fossil fuels. For most of Mankind’s existance Mankind has gotten along without the use of fossil fuels so you can do it too.
A couple of points. I probably believe in Santa Clause more than global warming, he at least brings happiness and joy. Forgot about release from household chores, electricity has allowed so many more people to indulge in the hobbies and personal interests because of the release from the burden of manual labour. If i could figure out a way to have my furnace and air conditioning on at the same time I would to celebrate this mess.