With Earth Hour 2010, which is to say: "anti-poor, anti-freedom, anti-humanity, anti-progress, anti-happiness hour 2010" just a day away, let's review what Earth Hour really means:
Anti-poor: It is anti-poor because its organizers support strict, coercive carbon mitigation policies which will destroy the ability of the third world poor to develop and become affluent.
It's easy and fun to sit in the dark for an hour with friends when you know you can turn the lights back on, but you're being incredibly dense, insensitive, and cruel to the people of the world without your advantages, who have a dream of developing and becoming affluent like you.
Those people often sit in darkness anyway, not by choice, but because of substandard power systems and intense poverty. They live in countries that need to industrialize, that need to burn fossil fuels, that need to use energy in order to develop.
The carbon-regulatory schemes at issue with the Earth Hour supporters, will destroy the dream of third world development by skyrocketing the cost of energy and all the things that energy is used to produce (everything). The policies you support with your vulgar blackout today, will cause people to starve tomorrow.
Anti-Freedom: Last year's publication of SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and the ensuing public outrage by environmentalists helped show that carbon regulation is not about saving the environment, it's about controlling people.
In it, Levitt and Dubner agreed that global temperatures are on the rise, and assumed for the sake of argument, that global warming is caused by human carbon emissions, will have catastrophic effects on humanity and global ecosystems, and must be stopped.
Assuming all these things are true, Levitt and Dubner proposed a novel solution that would fix the problem without destroying the global economy, plunging the world's middle class into poverty, and leaving the world's poor absolutely destitute.
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the 1990s, it released sulfur compounds into the upper atmosphere, which reflect sunlight back into space, causing a notable decline in global temperatures for a few years in the 1990s.
Levitt and Dubner proposed a very inexpensive project (for just a couple hundred million US dollars) to fly a long hose into the upper atmosphere with helium balloons and pump sulfur compounds into the upper atmosphere. This would slow global warming and stabilize atmospheric temperatures.
You would think that environmentalists would have rejoiced that the climate disaster to come could be averted cheaply and easily without sacrificing the world's poor right? Wrong!
The authors of SuperFreakonomics were excoriated by critics in the environmentalist movement, proving that they are not at all actually interested in fighting global warming. That's just a front for their agenda to control your life.
Anti-Human: Supporting an environmental treaty mandating steep reductions of carbon emissions is tantamount to advocating a demolition job of industrial civilization and all of the wonderful things it has brought humanity.
Presently, the overwhelming majority of energy generated globally is produced from the combustion of carbon-emitting fossil fuels. To severely restrict their use with draconian regulations and taxes is a declaration of war on humanity and its means of survival.
Light isn't an indication of some hideous crime against the Earth. It's an indication of great achievements for humanity! It isn't a badge of failure, but a stamp of success!
Industrial civilization has shined a light on the world, and in all the places where that light is brightest, it is because the people there live the longest, most productive, most literally enlightened lives.
Those lights illuminate schools, homes, and office buildings where students, families, and workers spend their time extending and improving their lives and the lives of others by creating and exchanging things of value.
Conclusion: Celebrate Earth Hour tomorrow by being proud to live on this Earth and use its resources to improve your life. Keep your lights on and be grateful for the advantages you have because of them.
Light is a blessing, not a crime.
