Let There Be Light!

Tonight is supposed to be the annual celebration of "Earth Hour",  instead of turning off your lights, turn them on to celebrate what electricity has done for mankind

This excellent essay on the Earth Hour event, to be held tonight at 8:30PM in every local time zone, is an eye-opener. Earth Hour is a testament to stupidity, in my opinion, and deserves to be mocked. North Korea reminds us what it is like to like in darkness, both politically, and in energy poverty.

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.

As Iain Murray at Instapudit suggests:

. . . you could join us in celebrating Human Achievement Hour. As well as keeping the lights on, you could be:

• Watching your favorite TV show or movie thanks to satellite technology
• Participating in the craft brewing revolution with a cold drink
• Facetiming or Skyping with far-off friends and family
• Traveling home from a night out with a rideshare driver
• Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family

Celebrate just how far we’ve come from the preindustrial age and, if you’d like, use the hashtag #HAH2018 and tweet examples and photos at @ceidotorg.