I’m against Earth Hour. A lot. It s a ridiculous idea that switching off the light causes any effect. At best it is useless and at worst it destroys power plants. Consuming energy is no problem. Consuming energy from non-renewable sources is. We should therefore switch to nuclear power as soon as possible.
I wrote the Earth Hour people in December 2009, but they never answered me back. Most likely because they are so high on symbolism they are unable to actually face the fact that symbolic actions does nothing to further the environment. As the Ayn Rand Center so nicely put it:
This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spend the hour stargazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offer special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.
Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.
Screw the Earth Hour and the damaging, feel-good-only, crazy acts of symbolic terrorism. Sponsor an environmental nut-job and switch on an extra lamp today between 20.30 and 21.30.
