Earth Hour should be renamed “Blackout Night” and be held outdoors, for the whole night, in mid-winter, on the longest and coldest night of the year - 22 June in the Southern Hemisphere.
Winter nights are usually still and cold, so the candles crew can experience what it was like depending on alternate energy in the recent snowstorms in the Northern Hemisphere when wind turbines froze and solar panels were covered in snow. The back-to-nature brigade can also try living without iron roofs and concrete walls, both of which require coal and emit carbon dioxide during their production.
To hold a candles-and-champagne party indoors, on the mildest night of the year, for just one hour, shows that the whole thing is green tokenism. Moreover both candles and champagne emit carbon dioxide. Let the true believers try the real thing in one of the extreme seasons so they can appreciate the great benefits we take for granted when using all of our carbon fuels.
Instead of sneering at human achievements they should salute the people who keep the lights on for the other 364 days of the year.
All over the world we have aging power stations and an orchestrated campaign by a few warm and well-fed agitators to harass, delay and deter construction of new power facilities.
Such a campaign can only have one result – many “Earth Night” blackouts are assured.
So I support “Blackout Night” to prepare our population for the dark days ahead.
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
