My Tearful Confession: Yes, I Kinda-Sorta Participated in the Earth Hour Power-Off, Accidentally

A commenter asks if anyone actually did this.

Oddly enough, I did -- sorta. I was visiting hippy-ish friends on Saturday night and they did it. Over the rest of our objections. We were conservatives or leaning this way and were annoyed by the bullying hippy environmental nonsense.

But, as it turned out, drinking beer in candlelight was kinda nice.

The thing is -- I was just complaining about this IRL -- there's nothing necessarily bad about earth day, or earth hours, in principle.

I like the environment. I don't like pollution (real pollution, I mean; I am less concerned by carbon dioxide, "The Invisible Killer").

I like the earth. When the earth is invaded by aliens, I promise to be on the earth's side.

Unless the aliens are the Tempter/Bargainer sort of aliens, who promise great wealth and power to those humans willing to sell out their fellow men and act as managers and executioners for the alien masters; in that case, of course, it really depends on the deal they offer.

But I think that's obvious.

Anyway, a lot of this crap -- like conserving electricity once a week -- is not actually a terrible idea, and can lead to the rediscovery of forgotten pleasures. Like -- with the tv off, who knows what you might do. Wives might actually agree to sex, if only to mitigate the tedium.

But obviously the "movement" is not about the celebrating the earth per se, or conserving energy, or anything like that. It is a joyless affair, not about celebrating anything, but rather castigating the heretics and bullying the meek; and calculated to exclude anyone who doesn't buy into the envirosocialist/enviroluddite manifesto.

Forgive me for sounding Crunchy Con here, but there are worse things one could do than light candles one night and simply read by them (reading having been largely given up on my many of us, including me), or make merry without the distractions of the tv or internet. Even for futurists, there is something that just feels right and wholesome about the "Old Ways," and returning to them, even superficially and briefly, for a few hours at a time.

The fact that this reduces the electricity bill and also reduces some of our demand for foreign oil is almost just a bonus.

But of course that's not what earth day or earth hour is, and it never will be. But there is room for an Alternative Earth Day, one that genuinely celebrates what a splendid planet we've been given either by luck or fate or God Himself.

And candlelight is kinda nice.

A lot of conservatives railed against the idea (again, I among them); but that conflates antipathy for the bullies and busybodies who endlessly push this PC pap on us with regard for the planet itself. They call themselves spokesmen for the earth; but of course they are not. And we shouldn't let their insistence that they are fool us.

That doesn't mean I'd participate in their Earth Hour penance plan again, nor will I be attending an Earth Day event. (In San Diego, the GOP is barred from having a table at the event, letting me know in no uncertain terms that I'm quite unwelcome.)

But it might not be a bad idea to untangle the idea of earth and conservation from the anti-progress, anti-wealth, anti-human perversion the self-appointed Guardians of Gaia have fashioned them into.

If we do that, we're buying into their definitions and their agenda, even if we oppose it.

posted by Ace at 03:15 PM

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