Tomorrow, 25th March, sees the annual abomination of Earth Hour, during which we are being cajoled to compete with North Korea in terms of just how dark, dismal, ill-informed, manipulated, obedient and coerced we can manage to be for a whole hour. My favourite text for the occasion is this classic piece from Ross McKitrick:
Earth Hour: A Dissent
Ross McKitrick
In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here is my response. 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. Many 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. After all, that’s how the west 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 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.
I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something 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 with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.
Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/earthhour.pdf
Climate Scepticism 
Are all those luverly windmills going to be stopped from turning and the solar panels covered up during Earth hour because, if successful, we won’t need that electricity? What an absolutely rubbish thing Earth Hour is. I almost never use the term “virtue signalling” but this concept fits the bill almost exactly – an absolutely pointless absurdity, accomplishing nothing other than demonstrating practitioners of it are stupid sheep. Expect Schools of Environmental Science to become little black holes of stupidity – but virtuous stupidity holes.
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Dr McKitrick might have mentioned the internal combustion engine for the automobiles that replaced horses, a great leap forward in the reduction of horse manure and thus for public health in cities.
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FREDERICK COLBOURNE: Perhaps, but when I was a boy in London our milk was delivered by horse and cart every day, and rag n’bone men were regular visitors. Horse droppings were eagerly competed for by neighbours for their gardens, and rhubarb could not properly be grown without this equine contribution. But you are correct, I recall reading about the huge quantities of horse manure that had to be removed from New York: an exercise that had to be conducted every day of the year, rain or shine.
Far more important to the health of city dwellers, IMO, was the development of sewage disposal systems, powered by pumps using fossil fuels. Up till then, cities always had more deaths than births and their populations were only maintained by immigration. Violet sellers in London plied their trade to offset the smells coming from horse and human excrement alike.
My lights will be kept on through Earth Hour.
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Lomborg tweet: “If you light several candles during #Earth Hour, you will actually increase your CO₂ emissions.”
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Why do the climate fanatics celebrate and seek the darkness?
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