The nonsense of "Earth Hour"....

Came across this from Ross McKitrick:

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.

Absolutely. Read the rest of it!

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Tokenistic posturing...

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We are all told we should ‘sign up’ for Earth Hour, stop smoking on ‘No Smoking Day’, celebrate ‘International Women’s Day’ amid many other little campaigning days, hours, minutes and probably seconds across the year. This annoys me.

I know, I know. I should be joining with all the other folk this evening and turn off my lights as part of a call to “…stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future.” But I’m not going to do that as:

1. It’s tokenistic posturing
2. I don’t like WWF

Plus of course Earth Hour will be bad for the planet:

Even if power stations are turned off, the upsurge in turning the lights back on one hour later will require power stations that can fire up quickly like oil and coal. Energy experts said it could therefore result in an increase in carbon emissions "rendering all good intentions useless at a flick of a switch.”

Ooops!