Ah that environmental equivalent to the hate week that Orwell spoke of in 1984 is almost upon us and like hate week its all about manipulating the feelings of the proles so that the dominate religious ideology can be both strengthened and reinforced. Thus when we are exhorted to turn off our lights for earth hour those of us who do not plunge our homes and business into darkness can paint targets on our foreheads for the faithful to aim at with their condescending scorn.However like a lot of religious mumbo jumbo the underlying assumption about the effectiveness of this act of environmental contrition will be grossly overstated as will the culpability of humanity for the claimed changes in the climate. With that all in mind I found Bjorn Lomborg‘s argument in today’s Oz most compelling:
click or source
You don’t have to succumb to the group think about the “virtue” of turning off your lights or worse yet joining in to the immoral stupidity of getting your snout into the Photovoltaic subsidy trough that drives energy costs up for everyone else. There are better ways than these empty gestures to tread lightly on the planet, holiday in this country rather than taking that jet fueled jaunt around the planet, use your appliances and cars until they are worn out instead of replacing them when the warranty runs out. Forgo the pleasures of the fashion industry by only buying new clothes when your old ones are worn out, heck you could even seek a better balance between the need to be clean and the frequency and duration of your showering. All of theses things are going to make more difference to the planet than turning your lights off for one hour, especially if you have, like yours truly, already been using the most efficient LED lights (that use 85% less energy than an incandescent bulb )for quite some time …
Never been a big fan of cake Comrades
Related articles
- Bjorn Lomborg’s Dirty Little Math (cleantechnica.com)
- The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (landandlivestock.wordpress.com)
- Earth Hour 2013: March 23, 8:30 PM (environmentaleducationuk.wordpress.com)
- Earth Hour Is a Colossal Waste of Time – And Energy (slate.com)
- In Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bjorn Lomborg urges delay with misleading stats (climatesciencewatch.org)
- Turn off gadgets during Earth Hour (technology.inquirer.net)
- Earth Hour (popalx.wordpress.com)
- My Blog Supports “Earth Hour.” (zedie.wordpress.com)
Excellent and pertinent post, Iain, and a great article by Bjorn Lomborg. He has repeatedly been a voice of reason in the global warming/wealth redistribution scam vs common sense.
As for the ridiculously symbolic ‘Earth Hour’, I prefer Tim Blair and Jo Nova’s idea of an ‘Hour of Power’.
Jo suggests instead of observing Earth Hour we:
Tim Blair’s readers have even more creative ways of spending the ridiculous ‘Earth Hour’.
I agree, Iain; I have always thought this Earth Hour thing was a waste of time and effort. It is just pointless tokenism really. If people want to conserve energy then there are any number of things they can do, but all involve changing regular behaviours. The problem with Earth Hour is that convinces lazy yuppies they can make a difference with the least possible effort.
Thanks Brian Its nice to find some common ground!