Illusion on Illumination

Viv Forbes sent me a me a media release about Earth Hour but a friend of this blog, Jim Fryar, has already published Viv's efforts so I will post the link for you to read it over there. While I'm at it I thought that I will provide a few other links as well.

Photo sourced The Age. In Sydney, they made the Opera House “green” this year while the rest of the city (seen in the background) seemingly ignored the idea.

Energy Roulette Week (The antithesis of Earth Hour)
Viv Forbes has come up with an alternative proposal to Earth Hour, an opportunity for those driven to observe this event to go beyond the tokenism of Earth Hour and enjoy the full experience of the possibilities of life without electricity in Energy Roulette Week.

What happened to “Earth Hour”?
asks Joanne Nova in her blog posting. Joanne points out how this event is loosing momentum like a dying candle. A lot of the media in 2013 are only paying it lip service. Joanne also provides this quote from Lomborg

Lomborg argues that more than a billion impoverished people around the world have no switch to flip, lacking the electricity that we take for granted. Earth Hour, he implies, demonizes a technology that has lifted great swaths of humanity from lives of great burden and toil — and which the globe’s poorest still so desperately want and need.

 Tonight’s ‘Earth Hour’ is not only futile, but sends the wrong message
Anthony Watts writes

Electricity has been a boon for humanity. And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels  (paraffin comes from petroleum) —and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs.
Fundamentally, cutting emissions in the short run is no easy task. Today, green energy is too costly to be a viable solution. Real breakthroughs in energy technology will only come with more investment in research and development.

An Hour of Self Delusion
Donna Laframboise writes

It’s time WWF activists and sanctimonious IKEA executives stopped deluding themselves. There is no evidence whatsoever that the public is prepared to endure “large scale change” in order to combat global warming.
Nor is there any reason to believe that symbolically turning out the lights for one hour out of a possible 8,760 each year will alter that fact.

 The futile gesture of Earth Hour
From Bishop Hill

Like the Saturnalia, Earth Hour comes round once a year, bringing with it back-to-front thinking, upside-down reasoning and many ripe opportunities for ridicule.
Bjorn Lomborg is more seriously minded of course, and his take on the annual switch-off is here. There is a related video.