The Real Meaning of Earth Hour

By Keith Lockitch (March 23, 2009)

On Saturday, March 28, cities around the world will turn off their lights to observe “Earth Hour.” Iconic landmarks from the Sydney Opera House to Manhattan’s skyscrapers will be darkened to encourage reduced energy use and signal a commitment to fighting climate change.

While a one-hour blackout will admittedly have little effect on carbon emissions, what matters, organizers say, is the event’s symbolic meaning. That’s true, but not in the way organizers intend.

We hear constantly that the debate is over on climate change–that man-made greenhouse gases are indisputably causing a planetary emergency. But there is ample scientific evidence to reject the claims of climate catastrophe. And what’s never mentioned? The fact that reducing greenhouse gases to the degree sought by climate activists would, itself, cause significant harm.

Politicians and environmentalists, including those behind Earth Hour, are not calling on people just to change a few light bulbs, they are calling for a truly massive reduction in carbon emissions–as much as 80 percent below 1990 levels. Because our energy is overwhelmingly carbon-based (fossil fuels provide more than 80 percent of world energy), and because the claims of abundant “green energy” from breezes and sunbeams are a myth–this necessarily means a massive reduction in our energy use.

People don’t have a clear view of what this would mean in practice. We, in the industrialized world, take our abundant energy for granted and don’t consider just how much we benefit from its use in every minute of every day. Driving our cars to work and school, sitting in our lighted, heated homes and offices, powering our computers and countless other labor-saving appliances, we count on the indispensable values that industrial energy makes possible: hospitals and grocery stores, factories and farms, international travel and global telecommunications. It is hard for us to project the degree of sacrifice and harm that proposed climate policies would force upon us.

This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits. It sends the comforting-but-false message: Cutting off fossil fuels would be easy and even fun! People spend the hour stargazing and holding torch-lit beach parties; restaurants offer special candle-lit dinners. Earth Hour makes the renunciation of energy seem like a big party.

Participants spend an enjoyable sixty minutes in the dark, safe in the knowledge that the life-saving benefits of industrial civilization are just a light switch away. This bears no relation whatsoever to what life would actually be like under the sort of draconian carbon-reduction policies that climate activists are demanding: punishing carbon taxes, severe emissions caps, outright bans on the construction of power plants.

Forget one measly hour with just the lights off. How about Earth Month, without any form of fossil fuel energy? Try spending a month shivering in the dark without heating, electricity, refrigeration; without power plants or generators; without any of the labor-saving, time-saving, and therefore life-saving products that industrial energy makes possible.

Those who claim that we must cut off our carbon emissions to prevent an alleged global catastrophe need to learn the indisputable fact that cutting off our carbon emissions would be a global catastrophe. What we really need is greater awareness of just how indispensable carbon-based energy is to human life (including, of course, to our ability to cope with any changes in the climate).

It is true that the importance of Earth Hour is its symbolic meaning. But that meaning is the opposite of the one intended. The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

A Critique of Global Warming Science and Policy

PRESS ADVISORY
AYN RAND INSTITUTE

September 15, 2008

A Critique of Global Warming Science and Policy
A panel discussion at the University of California, Berkeley

What: A panel discussion challenging widely accepted views on global warming science and policy, followed by a Q&A

Who: Keith Lockitch, fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and Willie Soon, geoscientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Where: 145 Dwinelle Hall, UCB campus, Berkeley 94720

When: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 6:30 pm

Description: It is now widely believed that man-made greenhouse gases are causing an unnatural warming of the earth that will have devastating consequences for human life. Environmentalists and politicians are pressing for severe restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions aimed at preventing global warming. But are these beliefs and policies justified? What does the scientific evidence actually support regarding the causes of climate variability and the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Are the predictions of catastrophic changes supported by scientific fact? Is government economic intervention aimed at severely restricting greenhouse gases an appropriate policy response? Panelists will address these critical issues in a lively discussion.

Bios:

Keith Lockitch is a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, specializing in science and environmental policy. His writings have appeared in numerous newspapers and he has been a frequent guest on radio shows. He is also a contributing writer for The Objective Standard, a quarterly journal of culture and politics. Dr. Lockitch teaches a history of physics course for the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and has conducted postdoctoral research in relativistic astrophysics at the University of Illinois and at Pennsylvania State University.

Willie Soon is both an astrophysicist and a geoscientist at the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Soon is the receiving editor in the area of solar and stellar physics for the journal New Astronomy. He is also the chief science adviser of the Science and Public Policy Institute. He writes and lectures both professionally and publicly on important issues related to the Sun, other stars, the Earth as well as general science topics in astronomy and physics. He is the author of The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection.

For more information on this talk, please e-mail media@aynrandcenter.org

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Dr. Keith Lockitch is available for interviews now and after his panel discussion.

Contact: Larry Benson
E-mail: media@aynrandcenter.org          
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARI’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

 

Read more…

Vatican Doesn’t Deserve a Statue of Galileo

Washington, D.C. – According to news reports, the Vatican plans to commission a statue of Galileo, the father of modern science, with support from an anonymous benefactor. Before the story leaked to the Italian press, church officials had tried to keep news of the project quiet for fear of scaring off the donor should the plan generate too much controversy.

“This plan ought to generate controversy,” said Dr. Keith Lockitch, Fellow of the Ayn Rand Center. “It is outrageous for the church to try to pretend to honor a scientist famous for being a victim of its own tyranny.”

“Galileo has always been the most eloquent symbol of the clash between science and religion. He was persecuted by the Inquisition simply for defending ideas that ran counter to church dogma.

“What was Galileo’s ‘crime’? He wrote and spoke out publicly in defense of the scientific fact that the earth orbits the sun and revolves on its own axis. But because this was contrary to scripture, the church convicted him of ‘vehement suspicion of heresy,’ forced him to recant publicly under threat of torture, banned his writings, and sentenced him to house arrest.

“Many today would argue that faith and reason are perfectly compatible. But Galileo’s trial and conviction is a reminder of the evils that can be perpetrated by those who are completely committed to faith, when they are challenged in their blind beliefs by the facts and logic of a determined proponent of reason.

“And this is not just something that happened 400 years ago with no relevance to the present; it is a battle that continues to rage to this day. While few would now declare the Earth the motionless center of the universe, as Galileo’s persecutors did, it is not difficult to find those who claim it to be 6,000 years old and deny the long, slow evolution of its species. If today they are relatively restrained in their war on reason, it is only for lack of political power.

“A statue honoring Galileo, a paragon of reason, would be totally incompatible with the church’s essence as an institution of faith. It would be an honor that the church can never deserve.”

Dr. Lockitch has a PhD in Physics from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and is a Fellow at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. His writings have appeared in publications such as the Orange County Register and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Dr. Keith Lockitch is available for interviews. To book him for your show, please contact Larry Benson:
E-mail: media@AynRandCenter.org
Phone: (949) 222-6550, ext. 213

For more information on Objectivism’s unique point of view, go to ARC’s Web site. The Ayn Rand Center promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”