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Earth Hour is bollocks. Earth Hour cynics are encouraged to submit their pictures of power-hungry activities for Earth Hour 2010. Also, any articles or research you've done or if you'd like to be added to the list of supporters... CLICK HERE to upload photos or get in touch with the team.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Earth Hour demonizes electricity

a reader sent in the following article...

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 is nothing more than an hour devoted to anti-humanism.

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. Most 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. That’s how we 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 is nothing more than an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It invites people to become sanctimonious do-gooders by turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in service of some ill-understood abstraction called “The Earth”, all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of electricity. People who want to do without electricity to prove their symbolic solidarity with nature 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. Haiti just went back to nature. For humans, living in “Nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work to end poverty and disease are struggling against nature. I hope they believe in their own cause enough to leave their lights on…

If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and therefore we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something very 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 is something to be ashamed of.

10 comments:

  1. i visited your site n was good enough then othere site that i visited last month



    work and study

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  2. The rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.," "This insidious invasion of the biosphere by our plastic waste is in some ways MORE ALARMING for us humans than GLOBAL WARMING. Our bodies have evolved to handle carbon dioxide, the nemesis of global warming, indeed, we exhale it with every breath


    natural disaster

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    1. you're an idiot, for you Technology can never solve any of the world's problems, you're a people hater, believing we are no better than slugs or worse a cancer that has no cure.
      http://youtu.be/5AT3a3-gLH8

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  3. EH is conspiration

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  4. Every time they do an earth hour i just go and switch all the lights and electrical appliances on including the kettle which is high energy consumption.

    Makes me feel so much better knowing I am counteracting some numpty who has switch all their lights off and is sitting in the dark.

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  5. Article was written by Dr. Ross McKitrick, a professor at the U. of Guelph. Top notch!

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  6. It seems like there are some pretty ethnocentric arguments in here. You obviously know your stuff though, and it's easy to relate to the frustration that "quick fix" movements cause when they fizzle out

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  7. thank's for your information and i like your post

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  8. I'm in New Zealand - we produce better than 70% of our electricity through renewable sources, like Hydro, with some (heavily subsidised) wind generation thrown in. The Kids at our schools are being taught (today) that Earth Hour will save them from being fried &/or drowned within the next 11 years, as per Al Gores dream for us. I dunno if I'm heading towards any "point" other than to say.... Greenists political agendas have nothing to do with conservation.... Power and control is what the NZ Greens wish for us... oh.... and more Tax.... for subsidies.... and to silence any differing opinions through legislation... but I digress. Cheers - Ill think of this blog as NZ is first in the world to reach 8.30pm on the big day & I turn on the lights, lol.

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  9. Kudos, not only do I think "climate change" is absolute bunk, but I think that they are trying to force their green religion on me and all of society. I will be turning more lights on than usual for earth hour.

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