And now, a more cynical view.
Earth Hour is the very sort of worthless gesture politics that has come to symbolise the modern environmentalist movement. That, and the fact that amongst the hordes of hippies, crusties, and other miscellaneous soap dodgers who occupied the City of London during the G20 summit last week were folks who were marching demanding "action on climate" without any real understanding of what they were actuall demanding be done.
The idea's this. You can turn off all non-essential appliances for one hour in the evening, during which, I presume (I, incidentally, was taking my new lady out for dinner at the time, so didn't engage in it and thus know not what you're supposed to do in this period) you sit around, in the candlelight, and feel suitably guilty. Then you flick everything back on and voilá, it's back to your normal routine of brutality and depravity. The idea is that by voluntarily not using energy for an hour, you help lessen your carbon skidmark by a percentage - oh, and it raises awareness (ugh) as well.
Except does it really lower CO2 output, to turn off all non-essential appliances for an hour?
...No.
See, most electricity generation in Britain, where I live, comes, alas, from fossil fuels, mainly coal and gas. Now, if you don't know how a coal-fired power plant works, it's a bit like a giant steam engine. Okay, technology has advanced since the Victorian era, and they're more efficient than they would have been 100 years ago, but still... it's a steam engine at heart. Vast quantities of coal is burnt to produce heat, which is harnessed by a turbine of some description and turns a dynamo. Given the size of the machinery involved, this is not a piece of kit that can be flicked on and off with a switch - unlike the televisions and hairdryers and laptop computers that the people who participate in Earth Hour are flicking on and off. Now while these appliances may cause there to be a lower drain on the power grid, does this actually alter the fact that the same amount of coal is being burnt in the power stations, and thus the same amount of smoke and carbon dioxide is going up their chimneys? It does not, because to lessen or increase the energy output of a big coal-fired power plant takes an awful lot longer than an hour and so it's probably easiest just to leave the power stations happily burning up coal at the same rate as before.
Hence, in participating in Earth Hour you are doing precisely Sweet Fanny Adams to lessen pollution.
But then, it's not about lowering pollution meaningfully, is it, or any similar stunts? It's about "raising awareness" and "showing your support." On one episode of the BBC's Top Gear a while back they were reviewing a car called the Honda FCX Clarity, which will be the concept for an affordable, reliable, hydrogen-powered car. (Though hydrogen is not a panacea; in order to produce it you have to split it off from compounds containing it, which I. requires energy, and II. the easiest compounds to get it from are found in fossil fuels. But that's a digression.) During this segment, they got the talk show host and car collector Jay Leno on camera talking about it, and he said that any such hydrogen-powered car would sell like hot cakes. Why? Because, as he put it, "in America we like people to see the good work we're doing anonymously." Which is just it when it comes to Earth Hour - it's not a way of actually doing anything, it's a badge of honour. Look at me, it says, when you sit in darkness feeling guilty. I'm a concerned citizen. I'm ecologically responsible, I take an interest in things, and as such, I'm better than you. Look upon me, you great unhosed, for I am your moral superior, and if there were any justice in the world, you wouldn't be fit to cast your shadow within 500 metres of my allotment. That's what Earth Hour is about at heart - tacking onto a cause for one's own personal moral highgrounding.
Oh, but it "raises awareness." Hrmph. There's enough awareness about global warming, don't you think? Barely a day goes by without some transcribed press release in the papers about how we're all going to die. In order not to be aware of environmental worries, you would have to be totally dead. Sorry, but "raising awareness" doesn't wash. And I think that's pretty much what's wrong with the environmentalist movement as a whole - it's all about awareness, and not about action. So, we're in danger of accidentally cremating the planet. Fair enough. What can we do about this then? What positive, economically viable and politically realistic steps can be taken? The IPCC has deep enough pockets. Surely the vast sums it spends on propaganda, sorry, public relations, can be diverted into, say, investment and research into non-fossil fuel energy sources (including nuclear energy), CO2 capture and storage - or better still, usage in some application or other? Is that too much to ask?
I sincerely hope so, but alas, I fear not, for reasons that will be explained in Part III of my ongoing "What's wrong with environmentalists?" series of nodes.
This has been a "What's Wrong With Environmentalists?" node.
Emissions trading |||||||||||||||| Environmentalism is big business