Third Annual Lights ON for Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a global movement uniting people to protect the planet. Towards the end of March every year, Earth Hour brings together communities from across the world celebrating a commitment to the planet by switching off lights for one designated hour…Earth Hour 2013 will be held on Saturday 23 March between 8.30PM and 9.30PM in your local time zone.       - www.earthhour.org

You are cordially invited to a different celebration. At 8:30 PM on Saturday, turn on every lamp in your house to celebrate the beauty and utility of electric lighting.

The harnessing of electricity is a magnificent achievement and should be celebrated. The nighttime American cityscape inspired artists like Robert Hoppe, filmmakers like Woody Allen, and refugees like Ayn Rand, who wrote of her arrival in New York after years of starvation, poverty, and repression in Soviet Russia, “seeing the first lighted skyscrapers – it was snowing, very faintly, and I think I began to cry.” To plunge iconic buildings and landmarks, buildings that have had that kind of effect on people, to plunge them into darkness is shameful indeed.

But also, turn on your lights to express skepticism about the global warming theory. The Earth Hour website describes the event as “born out of a hope that we could mobilize people to take action on climate change”. But as I’ve written elsewhere, although the rise in global temperatures is well-established, there is evidence it is a natural phenomenon, unrelated to the electric light bulb. There’s good reason to question the sort of action the organizers of Earth Hour are calling for.

Finally, turn on your lights to protest the Big Government agenda. Republican gains in the 2010 elections may have killed the prospects for Cap and Trade legislation for now. But the Obama administration is persisting in its efforts to tax and regulate nearly every productive activity by executive order. In a 2011 interview with Audobon magazine, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “There’s clearly a need for the EPA to continue doing what it said it would do, which is to use the Clean Air Act to address carbon pollution and to recognize that progress is possible. We can make strides along with other agencies or departments on the executive side, even in the absence of legislation.” Show your opposition to this end run around the people’s representatives in Congress.

BTW, I’d like to create an album of homes lit up for Earth Hour. If you get a pic and are willing to share, please send it to me at Michael_Isenberg@MonteferroPress.com

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about hospital gowns, freedom, and the silliness of the environmental movement. Check it out on Amazon.com