Earth Hour: My Response

I object to this "Earth Hour" nonsense. I believe it to be fundamentally wrong-headed to begin with, arising from a belief that humanity and human ingenuity is a cause of problems rather than the solution to them, but I particularly object to the coercive and bullying sort of fashion in which the media has covered this event. The obvious implication, of course, in all of this is that if you don't fall in - if you don't accept the socialistic view that we ought to reduce our standard of living rather than improving it through technology (though, I should note, I don't expect that any of the rich backers of this sort of stuff will be reducing their own standard of living anytime soon).

Thus, my response to Earth hour is as follows. When I finish this post, I am going to get into my car and drive first to Bellingham, WA, then to Lynnwood, WA, then possibly to Seattle. Before I leave, I am going to turn on every single light in my apartment (most of which, by the way) are incandescent 100w bulbs. I am also going to leave my television on (though with the volume muted, in a concession to my neighbours) and I am going to leave all three of my computers running, specifically encoding video files.

Yeah, it'll cost me a few bucks. But, frankly, just for the pure joy of going against the grain - and of doing it while it's still legal - I'm going to do it.

Also, while I'm in Washington, I'm going to purchase expensive clothes, doubtlessly produced by Asian child labourers. Needless to say, I feel good right now.