Hamilton Prepares To Go Dark For Earth Hour

March 26, 2012

The City of Hamilton today announced, as part of the observance and celebration of Earth Hour on Saturday March 31, 2012, all non-essential lights in Hamilton will be turned off. Making the announcement was Mayor of Hamilton, Charles Gosling.

Mayor Gosling stated, “I am pleased to again lend the City’s support to this important cause of raising the public’s awareness of the amount of non-essential energy we use on a daily basis. The City will darken for an hour on Saturday,
March 31 at 8:30pm. I encourage all residents, business and building owners to join us by turning off all lights and equipment that are non-essential.

“I look forward to welcoming everyone to City Hall next Saturday starting at 5:00pm, as we celebrate, with other countries around the world, what has become the single largest voluntary movement creating awareness of the precious environment in which we live. We each have a responsibility to the planet we call Earth, and we can and must make a difference at home, at work and at play.”

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Category: All, Environment

Comments (4)

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  1. GMS says:

    Earth Hour: A Dissent

    by Ross McKitrick

    Image via Wikipedia

    In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.

    Here is my response.

    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.

    The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity.

    Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.

    People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

    I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

    Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.

    If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.

    No thanks.

    I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

    Ross McKitrick
    Professor of Economics
    University of Guelph

    • Fed Up Bermudian says:

      Respectfully, I would offer a slightly different interpretation. You allude to it in your diatribe against EH. By increasing our awareness of our consumption habits, we can make what resources we do have last a little longer. Keeping us from returning to a pre-industrialized and less civilzed state. The point of Earth Hour as I will be embracing it has nothing to do with shame or sitting in the dark to save an inconsequential amount of electricity. It has to do with increasing awareness of our wastefulness in order to provide renewed respect for the things that we do have. I have tremendous respect and admiration for all the things that civilization has bestowed upon the human race, and I don’t vilify it either. But would you not agree that nothing justifies the unwarranted and unnecessary waste of such a precious commodity as energy produced by fossil fuels? Being ‘civilized’ also means evolving. I’d like us to evolve to a state where we use what we need, mindfully and for a purpose.
      There’s no shame in any of my words. I’m sorry for you that you felt it was about that sort of negativity.

      I’ll be sitting in the dark for an hour, enjoying the sound of the crickets outside and soaking up the sound of the soft breath of my infant son. Proudly and without remorse. What’s so bad about that? And, without mindfulness, you won’t have that much ‘nature’ left to visit. The development you note in Ontario would likely not have happened in such a fashion if it weren’t for some ecological mindfulness. So- where’s the negative in participating in a consciousness-raising event?

    • My two cents says:

      What an egomaniac. Truly idiotic in every way. Nobody is forcing anyone to do this, it is completely voluntary and what a waste of his time to even write such elaborate drivel on this subject. It amazes me every day how selfish and egotistical humans can be.

  2. KWH says:

    Why doesn’t:
    Everyone, including businesses, turn off all unnecessary lights when not needed – ALLl the time
    Everyone including businesses, turns off all their computers when they are not in use – ALL the time
    Etc……

    You can continue the rest…

    Of course, Belco’s income would drop, so they’d just put the rates up…….