Note: Like many people have noted below, this post isn’t about solutions or actions you can do to save the planet. Ironically, I’m just trying to “raise awareness” here about the farce that is Earth Hour. However, a post about real solutions might show up in the near future.
Poster inspired by Get Excited and Make Things.
Thomas Friedman concurs:
The amount of time, energy, and verbiage being spent on making people “aware” of the energy-climate problem, and asking people to make symbolic gestures to call attention to it, is out of all proportion to the time, energy, and effort going into designing a systemic solution. We’ve had too many Live Earth concerts and Barneys “Have a Green Holiday” Christmas catalogs and too few focused lobbying efforts to enact transformational green legislation. If the money and mobilization effort spent on Live Earth had gone into lobbying the U.S. Congress for more generous and longer-term production and investment tax credits for renewable energy, and for other green legislation, the impact would have been vastly more meaningful.
You’ll pardon me, though, if I’ve become a bit cynical about all of this. I have read or heard so many people saying,” We’re having a green revolution.” Of course, there is certainly a lot of green buzz out there. But whenever I hear that “we’re having a green revolution” line I can’t resist firing back: “Really? Really? A green revolution? Have you ever seen a revolution where no one got hurt? That’s the green revolution that we’re having.” In the green revolution we’re having, everyone’s a winner, nobody has to give up anything, and the adjective that most often modifies “green revolution” is “easy.” That’s not a revolution. That’s a party. We’re actually having a green party. And, I have to say, it’s a lot of fun. I get invited to all the parties. But in America, at least, it is mostly a costume party. It’s all about looking green–and everyone’s a winner. There are no losers.
Earth Hour
Did you hear that Shell “supports” Earth Hour? Shell! Yes, that Shell! The one that made 450,000,000,000 dollars last year selling oil.
Did you know that in 2007, when questioned about Earth Hour’s effectiveness, the organizers claimed that it was just “the beginning”? And then, they said the same thing in 2008. And in 2009. In 2050, when half the world is underwater, they’d probably say the same thing. It’s just “the beginning”. (If you haven’t realised yet, it’s 2009 and we’re almost at the end…)
Did you realize that the words used in the Earth Hour ad, “an election between Earth and global warming” are a false dilemma?
Slacktivism
This post could be very long but you get the point. As readers of this blog, I’d expect you to be intelligent enough (ha!) to understand what’s wrong. It’s not just a waste of your time to support Earth Hour but it’s also very dangerous to condone slacktivism. Tonight, millions of people will go to bed happy thinking that they did a good thing, that they helped to save the world. But you know that’s not true. Start changing the world. For real this time.
Thanks for reading.
37 Comments
March 28, 2009 at 10:34 am
Wow, love it! Thanks for sharing.
March 28, 2009 at 11:04 am
“Sorry, but Earth Hour is just a publicity stunt. It won’t actually have any effect on anything.”
http://twitter.com/GPHemsley/status/1405916004
March 28, 2009 at 11:18 am
‘dear organisations joining Earth Hour – please do it for the rest of the year too, as a 0.0001% reduction wont help Earth.’ johndrinkwater – http://identi.ca/notice/2958565
March 28, 2009 at 12:12 pm
[...] gegen diesen ganzen Klimadings und so als an dieser Marketing-Aktion teilzunehmen. (siehe hier [via Cashy's Blog, der seit einiger Zeit einer meiner Favoriten ist - was IT-Themen angeht ]) Naja [...]
March 28, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Maybe the point of this (anti-) festival is not to reach the leaders, but to reach the herd. A visible, symbolic act everyone can see in their neighborhood: Conservation is or is becoming the new mainstream, not only in pioneer towns, but even among your neighbors. The herd will be making some tricky turns now, so stay alert and keep up. If you miss a change, you may find you’re no longer be in the comfortable middle of the herd, but on the dangerous edges with thinning foot traffic, susceptible to being marginalized, ridiculed, left out, or laid off. Your livelihood if not your life may depend on it.
March 29, 2009 at 3:24 am
I have to two things to say here:
1. Conservation is already mainstream. It has been for perhaps 3 years now. We don’t need any more events to make it mainstream or to “raise awareness”.
2. Mainstream conservation is very lazy and has no standard. Everyone can claim to be green. Coca-cola (one of the biggest water pollunters) is green. Shell is green. Even Exxon is green. As Friedman points out, somebody needs to get hurt in a revolution.
March 29, 2009 at 11:20 am
Good to hear you live in a pioneer town. In some places green was what Hollywood fashionistas did on TV but wasn’t relevant to local life … that was until the oil price spike last year, and then it began to make some sense to conserve, and buy small vehicles, etc., rather than the biggest luxury pickup truck they could write off.
When conservation is mainstream locally, it is less risky to stick your neck out and point out wasteful practices. Symbolic activities can let people see that its not only the local high school and college students, but many of their neighbors and co-workers, who implement conservation in their own lives, even if it doesn’t make sense for them to buy a shiny symbolic green vehicle or house.
When acting green is safe, more hidden inefficient or polluting practices, like those you point out in companies putting on a green face, will be recognized and addressed by the insiders and neighbors. When some outsider points out a problem and forces change, the result is often shame, resentment, defensiveness, and roadblocks to change. Change from within builds pride in change.
Maybe those ads putting on a green face are aimed not only at outsiders, but as much or more at changing the culture perceived by employees within the companies, and partners interacting with the companies, so they can also see top management is open to greener approaches, and it’s now safer than it may have been in the past to change their practices locally.
March 28, 2009 at 2:50 pm
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/03/23/the-ecodrain-cuts-water-heater-use-by-40/#more-21490
http://www.nextag.com/solar-powered-lamp/search-html
p.s. I noticed in most pics promoting Earth Hour, they usually just show major buildings in major cities with their exterior, multi-color lights being turned off with office buildings in the background with offices lit up. It seems like the most light polluters are f*kn governmental buildings who like to show off their fancy buildings with lights covering them. The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building all that shit- we don’t need them all lit up all the f*kn time. rec*ckulous.
March 29, 2009 at 5:40 am
Yep, I wonder the same thing. Why do we need external lights to be turned on at any point in time? Why not just switch it off all year round? Then again, the night skyline is one of the most beautiful things in the world. I want these lights to be turned on, but powered by the sun, wind and water.
March 29, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Note too that while all the big buildings get switched off, that still leaves things like street lights turned on in most cases. I’d love to see footage of Earth Hour from space, see if it made any difference at all to the amount of light radiated from the cities…
March 28, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I think every little bit helps, but I do agree that people spend more time attempting to get people to follow what it takes to be ‘green’ than they spend actually doing it. I think the earth hour, however, will raise awareness to those who had never really thought about it before and if even for one hour, people follow it, it helps.
March 29, 2009 at 4:01 am
Honestly, how isn’t already aware of global warming? With all the Live Earths and Earth Hours, you’d have to been in Gitmo for the last five years to not know! We are done raising awareness. We need real change now.
But slacktivists won’t stop. I know there will be a Earth Hour ‘10, ‘11, ‘12 and so on until the human race is extinct…
And of course, “every little bit helps”. But most people now think (thanks to all the brainwashing) that “every little bit” is enough. It’s not!
March 28, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Excellent post, I’ve been saying this for ages. I represent Cardiff high school on various conferences and one lately was on climate change. The whole thing was about raising awareness and how they’re going to go around telling loads of people about it, but they’re not actually doing anything about it! Flying around the world ‘raising awareness’ is just as harmful, if not more than doing nothing and just sitting at home in my opinion. People need to actually start changing if we ever want to solve this problem. Nice work writing what could be a very controversial blog post.
March 29, 2009 at 5:23 am
I get *exactly* what you mean. Most activism in high school is bullshit. Just last year, our class was supposed to do a presentation to raise awareness about child trafficking in Thailand. What a joke.
I’ve tried as much as possible to avoid such activities in high school. I don’t organize/attend fund-raising events. I don’t do “flag-days” (when we stand along a busy road and ask pedestrians to donate money to some charity that we have never heard about while the charity’s CEO is smoking a cigar in fucking Mauritius ; mostly, we do that for 5 mins, then put some of our own money into those tinboxes and go catch a movie
. These things are a waste of my time. Being a programmer, it’s better for me to use my coding skills to change the world. That’s why I work on public-benefit websites (not stuff like “Everytime you click this button, we’ll donate five grains of rice to a poor African family” but mysociety.org or Sunlight Foundation-like projects).
March 28, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Yeah! Let’s DO something. Like go lobby our leaders. Lobby them to do something. Yeah. Let Shell celebrate Earthhour alone, and let them lobby Congress alone. All of us blogizens can go post comments on the whitehouse site. Infinite comments. They’re free, after all. As many comments as we have time to submit, and all as excited as this one. They’ll be bound to listen. And then they’ll do something. Unless they keep listening to Shell instead.
Seriously though. You’re totally right. Earth hour is a (bad) joke. But before we get too impatient with folks for their right-minding, let’s remember how hard it is to “do” anything. The whole, waddyacallit, system, isn’t exactly arranged for maximum responsiveness to direct action by citizens.
I wouldn’t worry though. If the system isn’t responsive, and the technocrats already know they know best, at least the infinitely efficient markets will make our priceless “life styles” as infinitely expensive as necessary before we’ve got a planet with infinite infinite people, because infinity times infinity is Chuck Norris shit.
March 29, 2009 at 6:15 am
“The whole, waddyacallit, system, isn’t exactly arranged for maximum responsiveness to direct action by citizens”
Very true. I still have no idea what I personally should do. What can I do? But, at this stage (I hate to sound Republican…), I feel that nothing is in fact better than something. If we didn’t have Earth Hour, governments and corporations won’t be able to say “hey, look we turned off our lights for Earth Hour. we are green!”. At the same time, I can’t blame the majority of people for wanting to stop global warming and as a consequence of finding no other possible action to take, supporting Earth Hour.
Most of my anger is directed at the environmental activists, those people who organize these things (and those people that accept a Shell sponsorship!). The “smart” people, the powerful people. I hate Al Gore. I hate WWF. I hate all those well-read local organizers. These people know the truth (that all this doesn’t help) and yet they do it so *they* can become popular, so *they* can organize the “largest mass participation event in history”.
April 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Word to that.
The Lefty Loon says, All these “activities” are traps and distractions. (Commenting on the blogs of people you already agree with is…solidarity?)
But how forgivable is self-serving slacktivism? I.e., will these well-meaning folks hang with their funders when the real Change that’s gonna come is done come? Certainly slacktivism is less forgivable than the desire of regular folks to apply any balm available to their inflamed consciences and get on with their own worries. But before rounding up all the anons of the internet and looking for a plug to pull on this nonsense, let’s keep in mind the seductions of power, especially to do good, and of a platform to do it from, even if the power is petro from Shell, and the platform is drilling for it offshore. So they’re wrong, and you’re right, but beware beware the perils of Left factionalism.
Left factionalism is impossible to purge from the ranks because the narcissism of small differences is merely the overdeveloped form of the faculty for self-criticism, which thrives on feelings of helplessness. To call for a sit-down-do-nothing strike against doing nothing and calling it something doesn’t make you sound like a Republican, but like a properly Lefty critical mind, as frustrated as we all ought to be.
March 28, 2009 at 10:42 pm
If in 2050 half of the world is underwater, what will happen in 2100? This is so scary to think!
March 29, 2009 at 5:31 am
@caschy @GPHemsley @John Drinkwater @locateblogger Thanks for the comments! Now, go raise awareness about this post.
March 29, 2009 at 10:33 am
Change the world by changing your car’s fuel source: http://bit.ly/2rGU6g
March 29, 2009 at 11:30 am
What if (man made) “global warming” is a big hoax? The new “religion” of leftists?
“The science is settled”? Really? Perhaps not:
http://anarchangel.blogspot.com/2009/02/single-best-and-clearest-explanation-of.html#
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=288952680655100870&ei=n8vPSa7qHZTU2wKoq6jXCg&q=%22Great+Global+Warming+Swindle%22
April 17, 2009 at 7:01 am
C’mon. You really believe that global warming is a hoax? (1) There is overwhelming scientific evidence supporting it (The Inconvenient Truth does a good job of presenting this in a interesting manner) and (2) Why would anyone conspire to fake global warming? What do they gain by running such a huge scam? And how could they possibly to fake it on such a massive scale?
Besides, I don’t believe we should move to renewable sources because the environment is so beautiful, blah, blah (clearly I’m not an Al Gore fanboy). It’s more a political issue. Do you want to transfer wealth to dictators around the world? It is disheartening for anyone who believes in democracy. Of course, in the case of the US, like T. Boone Pickens advocates, you could just use American natural gas and oil but that’s not a good idea either because oil/gas are limited. Finding decent renewable sources of energy is worth the time and investment because it has the potential to the next big industry (after tech) and to revolutionise the world (as Tom Friedman argues). The country which leads this revolution will be the next economic superpower and hopefully, it’s a tolerant democratic country.
April 17, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I’d not cite An Inconvenient Truth for its “distinctly alarmist” view of what it claims will be a catastrophe:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
You have better sources to back up concern than that.
As for why, if there’s more public hysteria over it, are politicians more or less likely to approve extra funds dedicated to researching it and its argued effects? Are the professors and research teams publishing the research more or less likely to receive further funding if they paint overdramatic pictures of the results of ignorance? Are the “green” companies going to have more or fewer customers for their energy supplies if they paint a more dire picture? Fakery is not necessary; all that’s needed is exaggeration (slight or great) of not-quite-so-conclusive evidence to feed into public concern to feed into perceived public policy problems to feed into further funding. It’s possible to disbelieve that this is happening, but I don’t think it’s possible to say there could be no motive for fakery.
Regarding funding dictators, nobody wants that except the dictators. However, if the increased costs of alternative energy sources outweigh the benefits politically, it’s entirely reasonable to say we should primarily stick to what works (would that the public realize that were nuclear power!), while not stopping research into the alternatives. We will not suddenly and catastrophically run out — the writing will be on the wall for years, and increasing prices over time will provide the economic impetus to switch to the alternatives, even if they yet remain nominally more expensive. (That said, I think a small Pigovian tax offset by a reduction in taxes elsewhere would be an entirely appropriate nudge that does not involve “impoverishing” ourselves [an overstatement, but I can't think of a more precise verb at the moment] at the same time. Unfortunately we seem to be heading down the cap-and-trade road, which will inexorably lead to economically inefficient rent-seeking behavior.)
I’m not inclined to believe anyone who predicts the next big thing. We’re supposed to be in the age of the Jetsons and personal spaceflight, but that’s almost as far away as it was in the seventies. Personal computers did a good job sneaking up on us, too. Artificial intelligence? As popularly conceptualized (it seems now it’s more about machine recognition of specific individual facts derived from chaotic information sources) it’s never reached the C-3PO expectations of researches fifty years ago, and it seems foolish to predict it any time soon. Even that greatest triumph in Deep Blue was far more a matter of brute force than of “true” intelligence. The next big thing will be disruptive and it will not likely have been predictable.
March 29, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Its like this one episode of south park: all these hippies come to town and tell the kids of all the bad things that are going on in the world an that they need to be stopped. The organize a huge concert and say let’s start to change the world! Right now! Then they just start jamming away, and the kids are left asking when they are actually gonna do something. To me, earth hour is the same thing. Just a while bunch of people trying to change the world but they don’t actually do anything.
March 29, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I was with you as far as the thesis, “Stop raising awareness and start changing the world,” but the only world-changing I saw mentioned was lobbying the government. The problem with efforts to merely raise awareness is that they leave actual action up to others, right? Is there a big difference between efforts to raise awareness (in the hope that someone newly “aware” will do something) and lobbying for “more generous tax credits” (in the hope that someone will do something if the government is just more generous)?
April 25, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Are you saying that tax credits don’t work? Or are you saying that tax credits are not the best or only solution? If you mean the latter, I agree with you. There are many other ways to really solve the problem of global warming but this post isn’t about solutions (I’ll write that one soon). But tax credits do work. It’s a matter of economics. If something is cheaper than the alternative, people will buy that of course (provided sufficient infrastructure is built around that as well).
March 29, 2009 at 2:57 pm
“Did you hear that Shell “supports” Earth Hour? Shell! Yes, that Shell! The one that made 450,000,000,000 dollars last year selling oil.”
First, Shell’s revenues, not the amount they made, were $450bn last year. Their profits were only $26bn, which actually isn’t all that huge a profit margin.
Second, Shell produces more than just oil, so that profit/revenue isn’t all from oil. I don’t know the proportions, but nothing suggests to me that such commodities as natural gas don’t command respectable revenue as well.
Third…so? Shell makes a highly desirable product that people will buy, and they go to considerable effort to procure that product. Why shouldn’t they be rewarded for their efforts as the market decides? Companies live and die by how well they serve their customers (unless they’re US auto makers or financial institutions that are too big to fail). If someone makes a more compelling product I’m sure Shell’s revenues and profits will fall from what they otherwise might have been.
I note in passing the lack of complaints about off-topicness of this post with respect to Planet Mozilla and wonder where the complainers are, since every other non-Mozilla post I make seems to attract one or two. (Note carefully: I don’t think off-topic posts should be prohibited from Planet; Planet rightfully should be Mozillians and their lives and thoughts, however much or little they choose to syndicate.) Can it be that this subject material is less divisive than overviews of states through which one can backpack the Appalachian Trail? Perhaps it’s just that my posts tend to be longer (I refuse to cater to the tl;dr crowd) and thus do more to disrupt directly reading Planet. Either way, or perhaps some other way, the mind reels.
April 25, 2009 at 6:56 pm
1) I think you are splitting semantic hairs here. Why can’t the amount they *made* refer to the revenue? $450bn is real money that came into their bank accounts even though they had already spent $424bn of it.
2) I don’t know the proportion of profits from natural gas either but it doesn’t make a difference to me. Natural gas is also a hydrocarbon (used synonymously with oil). It might burn more “cleanly” but it’s non-renewable just like oil. And honestly, I’m more concerned with energy security than global warming. (Not made clear in the post, unfortunately). For the record, Shell makes little or no money from renewable energy.
3) “Shell makes a highly desirable product that people will buy” Well put, agree with you here. Companies should live and die by their bottomline, not by morals. [1] My outrage was directed at the organizers for allowing Shell to be a sponsor. It greatly reduces their own credibility *and* that of the ignorant people who support Earth Hour.
“I note in passing the lack of complaints about off-topicness of this post with respect to Planet Mozilla”
Well, this post caused me to take personal posts off Planet Ubiquity but yeah, no complaints from the Planet Mozilla people. Like many open source and programming communities, Planet Mozilla is made up of a fairly liberal crowd and when liberals see the word “Appalachia”, perhaps something goes off in their brain…
[1] I love free markets too. The reason d’etre for regulation is that the markets are not really free. There are banks and companies that are “too big to fail”! Ron Paul’s version of the free market is the *real* free market. Unfortunately, Ron Paul is never going to be President. And when given a choice between a government that supports big business (Republicans) and a government that supports businesses (Democrats) both big and small, I’d pick the latter.
March 29, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Earth Hour isn’t saving the earth and people who feel that way are misunderstanding the purpose of that and other similar ideas. I’m really glad you brought out Friedman’s quote as I hadn’t seen that before, do you have a source link for it?
What I read from your entry here, and this could be because you cut it short, is this. “Friedman agrees with you that ‘parties’ don’t actually save the earth.” However you then neither suggest real action, help others start real action, or do anything besides complain about what little action others are doing. I think you’re presenting a valid argument, but I think there might be a better path to your point that doesn’t just erode the path of others.
The only realistic goal of events or “parties” like earth hour is to have people discuss the topic. Even though I’m sure most people already know about climate change, it’s important to have an artifact that creates a path for people to discuss it again. Otherwise everyone, like you’re doing, just assumes that the people around them know and understands exactly what’s happening.
Earth hour gives you a fixed point where you can talk with your friends and neighbors about what you’re actually doing for climate change. Turning off your lights isn’t what you’re doing, it’s talking to people. And organizing large events to create discussions like that is actually hard to do. Sure you can say it’s not saving the earth, but neither is this blog post. So why do it? What’s the point?
Obviously the discussion isn’t saving the earth, but without the discussion could you actually do any real action? Likely people wouldn’t understand why such action would be necessary. It’s likely more a problem of human understanding than anything else.
So despite having little impact on the environment you can see the impact by the effect it has at least had on other people. http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/gallery/032809earthhour/
I’m glad you wrote your post, it’s good to have this debate and keep people honest on what still needs to be done.
May 1, 2009 at 12:35 am
The quote is actually from his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded (around page 140, if I remember correctly). The book’s a decent read. However, I find him overly repetitive at times, it’s like he assumes that the reader has zero intelligence.
Yes, I don’t suggest any real solutions. Solutions are not the focus of this post. That’s for another post.
>”Turning off your lights isn’t what you’re doing, it’s talking to people….”
I think you assume that most people care enough to discuss “what they’re doing to combat the problem”. Have you seen anyone having real discussion? Everyone I know just turned off their lights. That’s all. My point is exactly that – Earth Hour *prevents* people from discussing it further. So what should Earth Hour be instead? It should present real solutions. And honestly, I think one person can do little. A small set of motivated can do something. Did the entire nation of the United States send someone to the moon? No, it was a small group of scientists. What we need to do support these passionate entrepreneurs and individuals. And to some extent, we are already making progress but people don’t see it. Why? Because the media is too busy covering big events like the Earth Hour.
>”Likely people wouldn’t understand why such action would be necessary.”
These kinds of discussions are useful. But only once. We’re past this stage, everyone (name one person you know who doesn’t think global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed) understands that action is necessary but they don’t which action is better. Then, we feed them suggestions like turning off for your lights for one hour and now, they are satisfied with themselves. Yay! We did something! Global warming will go away!
Same point about the photos. It’s fantastic but for how many years more? OK. I liked Earth Hour 2009. I’m happy we had Earth Hour this year. But are we going to do the same thing in 2010?
March 29, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Earth Hour is fine, but the COMPLETE ABSENCE OF A REAL F***ING GOAL LINE from all discussions is pretty depressing.
Q: “I still have no idea what I personally should do.”
A: Reduce your share of greenhouse gas emissions to a sustainable level. Cue Chevron’s revolting greenwash ads with a concerned Jeremy Irons lookalike intoning “I will use less energy”. But how much less energy?!? With 7 billion people on earth, some engineers in Switzerland estimated that a sustainable personal share of greenhouse gas emissions works out to average power use of 2 kilowatts. In other words, all your energy use (not only electrical) should come to no more than 17,520 kilowatt-hours per year. Read Wikipedia’s “2000-watt society” article, which references Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent “The Island in the Wind” article in The New Yorker where I first heard of it.
2000 watts seems doable if you just look at your monthly electricity bill, but it’s staggeringly low if you factor in heating, transportation, and your share of society’s energy consumption. I think it’s 60 million Btus a year, only 478 gallons of gasoline! Ride a bike, go hardcore on energy conservation, don’t heat or cool your house, only fly every few years, consume dramatically less manufactured goods. And/or spend a lot on renewable energy generation.
It’s a daunting challenge, so all the feel-good stuff doesn’t mention it, so people sincerely believe that by replacing a few lightbulbs and recycling some paper they’ll save the planet. Every little bit helps, but those are tiny little bits.
Just because it’s difficult, the reactionary “I can’t/won’t live that way, therefore I won’t try at all and will be venemous and hateful towards enviro wackos” is far more moronic than not participating in whatever Earth Hour is going on.
May 1, 2009 at 1:25 am
We do have a goal line! The whole world turning off its lights (but twittering and facebooking about it from their laptops at the same time apparently) is the goal. Just that it’s a pretty fucked up goal as far as saving the world goes…
Thanks for crunching the numbers. I’m skeptical about the energy conservation efforts too. People will spend as much as they can afford (and IMO, they should). So if you don’t conserve, how do you save the world? By changing your sources of energy of course. Let’s concentrate on making renewable sources of energy work rather than on encouraging conservation (it’s a mission that’s bound to fail).
> “I can’t/won’t live that way, therefore I won’t try at all and will be venemous and hateful towards enviro wackos”
I never said that! I only said that the Earth Hour was a waste of time, money and energy and condoning it will only result in more Earth Hour-like meaningless events. My point is that we should shift our focus. Anyway, if you believe that conservation is very tough, what do *you* recommend?
Sidenote: I’m amused by the “every little bit helps” argument. Imagine you are sinking in quicksand and you manage to climb 1m/s but you’re being pulled down at 10m/s! Now, how does every little bit help.
This is quite similar to people struggling to lose weight. They exercise a lot everyday but then, they think “I’m exercising!” and eat a little more than usual. Of course, you’ll only lose weight if your calorie intake is lower than your calorie consumption. Amusing.
I’m sure there’s a more psychological term for this.
May 13, 2009 at 2:12 am
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, and I wasn’t accusing *you* of being venomous and hateful. We agree that doing a little bit for the environment is no more and no less than… doing a little bit for the environment!
I still recommend consuming dramatically less energy because it’s so much cheaper than renewable energy, even though getting down to a sustainable level is hard. Just as dieting is worthwhile even if it’s hard to get to your target weight. There’s a big quality of life difference between weighing 300 pounds and weighing 450 pounds; there will be a big quality of life difference between CO2 at 400 ppm and CO2 at 500 ppm. (And sure, press government for more research, more commitments to renewable energy, more binding global agreements, and market-based legislation.)
March 29, 2009 at 10:52 pm
[...] Taken from here. As Sir Eric Theodore Cartman said (and which I keep repeating), “Hippies. They wanna save the Earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad.” Caring about wasteful energy expenditure is fine, but think about it every goddamn day and act on it, instead of acting like a sanctimonious holier-than-thou ass and trying to get people to switch off lights for one hour on one day in a year. Use CFLs, use energy efficient devices, turn off devices in standby (they can suck up a surprising amount of energy in standby too), etc. Just be a nice person, OK? [...]
March 31, 2009 at 12:17 am
[...] for better world. Recent Earth Hour campaign got a lot of attention, summary of one’s view Stop Raising Awareness and Start Changing the World. Very easy to agree with, because it is right. Putting this attention capital to work would be well [...]
April 5, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Are CFLs the same as mercury vapor lights? As for slacktivists, I see a lot of them in hybrid cars passing me up on the road at speeds that make them less efficient but then lets rely on that great technology that others invent to save the earth.
July 11, 2009 at 12:52 am
[...] leave a comment » (above image taken from Fcuk Earth Hour) [...]