Earth Hour

I don't know if I should even spend my time noting this, but it seems like the commentary from the Journal-Sentinel's community columnists just gets stupider and stupider. They seem to include a small minority of reasonables set against a crowd of...

Well, best to avoid sputtering insults at them, which would only prove the phenomenon is contageous. I've been sitting on this for a week, since I read Al Smith go off on Earth Hour. The guy is apparently some ridiculous old crank who gets whipped into a frenzy by some news outlet that he takes far too seriously. Or maybe it's performance art -- imitating a slobberjawed hysteric as a kind of hoax. Or maybe he's really a good guy but had been involuntraily drugged on hallucinogens when it come time to write last week's article. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I tend to suspect he belongs in a place where the friendly nurse will remind him to eat his jell-o and take his meds.

Judge for yourself. Here is the article in question. I've shown it to a few folks who have said what I think is obvious: if this came in as a letter, it would be attributed to a crackpot and thrown in the dustbin with the old sandwich wrappers or at best the "maybe if we're really desperate" pile. It certainly wouldn't get spotlight treatment. But here he is, a columnist. And advertising his freelance writing availability in his ID tag.

I shall now give my analysis of his argument.

Earth Hour, in the real world, is a sort of a stunt event promoted by various cities and countries around the world, where near the end of March, people are encouraged to douse the lights for one hour. The idea is to draw a little attention to global warming and also just to get people to try just a tiny taste of conservation, on the notion that some might see that it isn't so bad and try it more. It's designed to be minimally demanding, an admittedly negligible start in terms of actual conservation, but significant to the extent that it commands some attention and breaks some resistence to further steps. It's basically costless. The only negative is that some people might decide that participation in this trivial act of conservation is sufficient to purge their guilt over their Hummer and do even less than they otherwise might.

Smith, on the other hand, calls it first a "charade" of "staged" "propaganda" for the "gullible."

Huh? How can any of this apply? What's the message that we shouldn't fall for? Is it a charade because even when you turn your lights off, they aren't really off?

Al's wife: Will you turn out the light when you come up, honey?

Al: Propaganda and lies! You won't trick me!

Well, apparently, despite being obviously intended to deceive us, this effort is in fact the exact opposite. It is, Al informs us, extremely revelatory. "It all becomes clear now" because nothing more perfectly reveals "the true intent" of Earth Hour: it is "merely the prelude" to an even more diabolical scheme. The manufacturers of Earth Hour want to "turn off the lamps forever" and achieve their "longed-for dark age." Really! This is their "vision," their "only approved endpoint": the "dismantling" of capitalism, consumerism, and civilization altogether. (How this all becomes clear from asking people to conserve electricity is not exactly spelled out in detail. I assume this is because Al considers it too self-evident to bother to explain. Somewhere in his fevered brain, it came to him that this was true, and all he need do is point it out to the rest of us, and we would see too. Yes! It's so obvious now! Thanks, Al!)

Al appropriately labels these enemies of civilization. They are not just "extreme" "radical" "zealots" who push "insanity", "absurdity", "buffoonery" and "tragicomic...farce." They are "Goths". Worse, their campaign is "anti-human" based on "self-loathing" and "self-flaggelation."

To be fair, Al does not completely eschew evidence. He makes, as far as I can tell, two observations of fact supporting his epithets against environmentalists. First, they obstinately reject the obvious solutions to all our problems, such as simply finding more gasoline and burning it. I guess Al remembers thirty years ago when the issue was more about shortages than it was about climate change. He should check into this milennium. Fighting pollution with more pollution is at best unproven as a panacea. Other solutions they reject: burning more coal, burning more corn, and building nuclear plants. They also supposedly hate hydroelectric power, because rivers should run free. I must confess I had not heard this. He does not explain why they supposedly reject harnessing hydroelectric power from the oceans.

His other item of evidence is that he quotes a single climate and public policy specialist as saying that Earth Hour, while nice, will not stop global warming on its own. No private inititive ever will. The government must step in. I suspect he meant applying a range of policy tools, a carbon cap-and trade system, or a tax, clean power subsidies, tax breaks or other incentives, government limiting its own wastefulness, and assisting with public awareness, research and effort coordination.

Al, however, is certain that what this means is that the black helicopters are coming to get him the next time he forgets to turn his porch light off. He has figured out that "government is to have the power" to cut off your energy. Oh, the Constitution! he raves. People sadly are too "afraid" to defy the Nazi "Uber Greens" or the Communist greens of the "People's Republic of San Francisco" and their worldwide "fellow travelers."

So, I'm right, am I not? This guy is a nut and the Journal's standards are dropping like a stone.