Bishop Hill McKitrick on Earth Hour
Ross McKitrick has posted some thoughts on Earth Hour, as told to a journalist last year:
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.
Reader Comments (48)
Yup. I find the whole thing sickening. Thanks to Ross M for eloquently summarising its absurdity.
I'm gonna turn on every light and appliance AND the air-con for the stupid hour. Dammit, might go down to the garage, open the doors and run the engines of both cars as well!
Well said, Mr McK. I'm not even sure when it is, but since I won't be doing anything different, it doesn't really matter. I'm tempted to put the security lights on, though... (and for Zed's benefit, that's TIC)
It would be great if Earth Hour could be turned into 'Earth Day' or 'Earth Week', held more frequently, and the power could be switched off for the whole country. As sinful animals bent on destroying mother nature, we deserve no less.
What do we want?
Earth Week!
When do we want it?
Now!
Well, if all the other numpties are turning off their lights for an hour we ought to be certain of reliability of supply for that hour. Yahoo! I hate that sanctimonious moral blackmail that more and more 'slebs involve themselves with. Bono is the worst. I always hated U2 anyway, but everytime he rears his cool shades into my field of vision, I head for the loo.
Great Scott, the man can write, I can't believe that he is a college professor.
It seems to me that the radical liberals and conservatives are almost in alignment with both sides reluctant to accept new technology and wishing for simpler, older, times.
I was most impressed when the local Church of Scotland minister said he was going to turn all the church floodlights on.
I will be turning all the house lights on and opening the curtains - when I find out when the wretched Earth Hour is!
sHx
Don't worry our leaders are working on it - we only have a year or two to wait.
Surely Earth hour will be time zone dependent to enable a difference to be seen at a time of peak power usage for a particular country/region.
It will also be an indicator of public feeling across regions as measured against normal power usage for the period.
Of course if power usage for that period/region stays the same or increases then it will be quietly ignored by the media and green pool.
Earth Day
File under: delusional; Green; hypocrisy; anti-humanitarian; neo-Luddite; utterly sodding pointless.
I agree with the criticism. I am totally in favour of energy efficiency, turning off lights when not needed, etc, etc. But I detest the sort of hollow grandstanding of Earth Hour. Its a form of absolution allowing big energy users to do a token gesture for 1 hr, and then feel ok about it for the rest of the year.
Last year, I turned on all the lights in my house during Earth Hour as a defiance of this nonsense.
For the rest of the year, I try to be responsible, and am in the process of moving to energy efficient bulbs using just 10% of the power.
Go to :-
http://emeire.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/earth-hour-2011/
- and pass the sick bag!
It will be worth monitoring the NETA web site over earth hour to see what effect it has on demand.
Earth Day happens this year to coincide with Good Friday; 22nd April. Dunno whether Earth Hour occurs on the same day; it's of no interest to me whatever. However, April Fools Day is of course 1st April which occurs three weeks earlier; now that's an appropriate time for such showboating.
I imagine that most people participating in Earth Hour will be feeling a mixture of holier-than-thou smugness along with a nagging suspicion they are being made a complete fool of. Both require mindless conformity.
Count me in on the Earth hour counter-demonstration.
It's as well to remember that the subtext to Earth Hour - as McKitrick rightly points out - is anti-humanitarian.
What the greens never discuss is the implications for the 1.5 billion people without access to electricity.
They - apparently - must continue to struggle on in the dark. No escape through progress for them.
Unfortunately for this 'logic', it runs headlong into the other green obsession: population.
The majority of population growth is projected to occur in the developing world. The central reason is high infant mortality. The simplest alleviation is general access to electricity. The direct relationship between falling infant mortality and falling birth rate is widely accepted and not at all controversial.
So, slowing the rate of population growth is best achieved by aiming for near-universal access to electricity.
Which puts the posturing nonsense of Earth Hour into proper perspective.
Well said, Professor McK!
I wonder how many green-infected wimmin would still support this nonsense if they were made to run a household, for the three winter months, with only renewables (that's wood, Louise ...) to use.
Best find a book on housekeeping, written in the 19th century. That'll also tell you about how to keep milk cool, about how to lay fires, how to keep your oven going in the kitchen, how to iron (you need two irons, and they're rather heavy!), and how to sweep the floors properly - no hoover, see ...
Lots of hard work? You bet!
No time to go to demos, no time to read a book - and enjoy getting your water from a standpipe, because there's no electricity to pump the water into your house.
And no - you can't get a servant: they also have to work their socks off to look after their families and homes.
Excellent article, and right on the money. Earth Hour as a concept ranks right up there with wind farms for generating electricity.
The most impoftant invention since the harnessing of electricity, in my opinion, is the fractional-horsepower electric motor; if you don't accept my notion, count the number of these in your home or your office, then think about how your home or office would function without them. I will be treating Earth Hour in the same manner as all of my neighbours in this London suburb - it will pass with no-one noticing.
This item is off-topic, I know, but I notice this morning that the 'green' classification for CiF articles in the Grauniad has vanished - is this a sign of the times?
I will be turning everything on including my gas-fired patio heater.
I hate to be boring, but Earth Hour is a direct remnant of the German policies identified by Peter Staudenmaier as enacted by Darré
This was an anti-industrialisation movement that was in conflict with the then German heavy industrialisation. It aimed to bring the German people back to nature 'Blood and Soil'. In the end it lost out to the Industrialists but the meme continued.
It's no surprise that the first Green member of Parliament was an ex SS General.
Earth Day should be regarded as Practice Day.
Practice how you will cope with power cuts, when green energy policies mean that there is not enough power, and simply, power is cut
Earth Hour 2011 is March 26th, from 8:30 - 9:30 pm local time.
I plan to celebrate human achievement hour that, coincidentally, precisely overlaps earth hour.
This involves turning on all lights, televisions and radios, and running space heaters, fans and the AC at the same time with windows open.
Oh to be in charge of the National Grid. I'd drop say, 20GW of power for an Earth Week. Or "Focusing the minds of our energy ministers" week. It would need to happen soon though because not everyone remembers buying candles during the last Winter of Discontent, which helped bring down a government.
Also think Viv nails where the green jobs will come from. Mostly household jobs. Too bad modern houses aren't designed for self-sufficiency, or prolonged loss of power. What happens to condensing boilers in a power cut?
@PFM
Go to :-
http://emeire.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/earth-hour-2011/
- and pass the sick bag!
Indeed. Praise the Mother Earth, and pass the sick bag.
What a wonderful marketing gimmick! What an hypocrite!
With so much food dumped into the restaurant's garbage bins, one presumes the restaurant owner would next distribute flyers showing images of malnourished children and asking the customers to join the 40-hour-famine. I'd respect them more if they were to do that.
@Retired Dave
Compulsory blackouts may well help bring back some sanity. But, who knows, if blackouts were to be introduced gradually, and with homo sapiens known to do irrational things, that option might well become normality in 20 years' time.
Also, sign me up, Scotty, to the counter-demonstration. I'd hate to be doing something as irresponsible as turning on all the lights and electricity consuming gadgets during the Earth Hour, but it seems to me it's necessary to introduce some light to the darkness the climate cultists are seeking.
You've caught my attention there Atomic Hairdryer, what does happen to condensing boilers in a power cut?
I've been saying this for a couple of years. Earth Hour makes no sense whichever side of the debate you're on. It's either woefully inadequate or pointless and irrelevant, take your pick. What it is though is attractive to middle-class Prius owning Greenie wannabes who use it to as a way of having a warm fuzzy for a few days because 'they're doing their bit', and also the warble gloaming doom mongers who know well the value of a good bit of repetitive ritual in maintaining belief levels. What Dirt Hour won't do is anything at all about saving the planet, and I've long suspected it was more about saving The Sydney Morning Herald, whose owners dreamt up the whole bloody idea with the WWF.
So I'm glad to see louder voices than mine calling for Earth Month, though I'd go further still. Dirt Hour is in March, early autumn for us in the southern hemisphere and spring time in the northern hemisphere. Not anybody's coldest or warmest season in other words. So there should be two Earth Months each starting on a solstice. Let's see the Prius owners here choose between no heating in winter or an electricity free Christmas and no aircon in the summer. Let's see their northern fellow travellers choose between freezing in the dark and having to deal with the kids over the summer holidays having no computers, games consoles or TV.
No to Dirt Hour, yes to Earth Month - put up or rack off.
Mr. SHX, nature is not my mother. Nature is hostile to things that live. No mother would do that. It is the hostility of nature that forces things to compete against each other. There is no garden of Eden.
I suggest Mr. SHX you plonk yourself in some part of your mother's domain like Africa and wait for her benevolence.
My people believe that it is only blind faith and mindless ritual that separates them from the animals.
George Steiner
I think you may have missed some of the nuance in sHx's early comment in this thread.
Is this what they hope to achieve?
@simpleseekeraftertruth
"Is this what they hope to achieve?"
Let me guess before I click on the link. It is North Korea.
@BBD,
thanks, mate.
@sHx
When a picture is worth a thousand words.
Should those promoting Earth Hour be
We Advocate North Koreas Energy Rationing System
Dunno how it might abbreviate though
I suggest the displaced people in Japan with no electricity or rolling blackouts can tell the greenies what it is like to do without electricity for more than an hour, which is a timeframe of no relevance.
@ George Steiner
Your comment may have been misdirected but the point well made. The demonising of advances in civilisation and the praise of some imagined utopian condition in its stead is simply wrong-headed and no more than Sturm und Drang. Where civilisation has made advances it did so by wresting them from the grip of nature, not having them bestowed by her.
@ Phillip Bratby, Mar 17, 2011 at 2:52 PM :
You took the words right out of my mouth!
Here we have the representatives of high-tech antions like Germany fleeing from Tokyo, we have the MSM wailing about a 'radiation plume', we have people in the Western world literally shuddering with fear - all induced by the MSM, and right under yet another fear-inducing headline in the DT, we have this image (nothing to do with radiation):
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01850/japan-grief_1850725d.jpg
How is Earth Hour going to keep this man warm?
I haven't got the words tod escribe how much I loathe these empty gestures which only alleviate the free-floating fears and feelings of guilt of those who participate.
Mr. Bratby said:
"I suggest the displaced people in Japan with no electricity or rolling blackouts can tell the greenies what it is like to do without electricity for more than an hour, which is a timeframe of no relevance."
Gives me an idea. Perhaps those who wish to support Earth Hour without inconveniencing themselves can buy "Earth Hour Credits" from homeless, electricity-less Japanese tsunami refugees.
@Dave Bob
"...electricity-less Japanese..."
They look quite powerless, too.
Re Cumbrian Lad
Lots of them don't work, and most of them the pumps don't work. Sometimes good'ol fashioned gravity fed hot water tanks might be better. If you have one, might be worth turning it's power off to see what happens, then have contingencies for when it's a long interruption.
I'm all for it! I intend to have my own 'Earth Hour'. And I'm sure you'll all join with me - 1:00 am to 2:00 am, 27th March.
Wot? No comment from ZeDeBee???
I shall be using my arc welder during Earth Hour.
Atomic Hairdryer
I know nothing of these 'condensing boilers' of which you speak ;-)
But I was under the strong impression that even old-fashioned-gas-boiler CH packs in if there's a power cut. The system is circulated by an electric pump.
It's worse than we thought.
A JOURNALIST asked! What he wanted was a one liner. What he got was a page that, I guess, he read in a hurry and did not use.
We must give them headlines!
Oh! And from the Earth Hour web-site, it seems Earth Hours are to be run at city level, where I doubt intervention will have much impact. However, if anybody's national government were to endorse this stunt, should not the powers that be be asked (A parliamentary question?) if the economic cost is worth the policy gain, particularly in these times of economic hardship and high unemployment.
Ah, the very thought of Earth Month.. shear bliss !!
All the climate extremists would have to turn off their computers for a whole month !! :-))