Earth Hour

Everyone should check out this post on TheRealEwbank, an energy blog I follow by an Australian named Leigh Ewbank. The post discusses the shortcomings of Earth Hour, the annual lights-out-a-thon that occurred earlier this week. Key passage:

For an event that professes to support climate change solutions, one would think that addressing energy poverty without wrecking our climate would feature prominently in Earth Hour campaigning. So why was energy poverty ignored? And what does this say about the environmental thinking that informed Earth Hour?

The benefit of Earth Hour is that it is a practically easy and visceral way to raise awareness about energy issues. The drawback is that it casts energy consumption in too negative a light. The construction of the global energy grid, particularly a reliable and cheap electric infrastructure, is certainly one of the most astounding and impressive human achievements of all time. The fact that such an achievement is built on fossil fuels is the problem, not the achievement itself. The practice of self-sacrifice that Earth Hour embraces does nothing to further the parallel cause that it tacitly endorses: creating a clean energy economy. The transition to renewable energy should include an expansion of energy access to the world's energy-poor. The movement should not be to stop using energy, but to use better energy.

PS. Read Leigh's entire post - it's fantastic.