29. Earth Hour Is a Colossal Waste of Time—And Energy

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2013/03/earth_hour_is_all_wrong_we_need_more_electricity_not_less.html

On March 17^th, Bjørn Lomborg wrote an article criticizing the efforts done for Earth Hour by pointing out its misconceptions and then he goes further in suggesting what would be better. To show how futile Earth Hour is, Lomborg starts out with a statistic which says that if everyone turned off their lights for one hour, it would be the same as China interrupting its CO2 emissions for only about 4 minutes. If a small decrease in energy consumption occurs, it does not mean that less electricity is being put into the electric network and even if the demand is lowered for a longer time, CO2 emissions may decease during that time, but “it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterward”. Lomborg said that Earth Hour indirectly tells people that electricity is bad when it actually improved the lives of billions of people by irrigating fields, keeping people warm, keeping food refrigerated, and in many other ways. Towards the end, he says that to make the production of electricity more environmentally friendly, “we should abandon the old-fashioned policy of subsidizing unreliable solar and wind—a policy that has failed for 20 years, and that will fail for the next 22[– and] focus on inventing new, more efficient green technologies to outcompete fossil fuels”.

The author’s purpose was to persuade his readers that Earth Hour is something that is not effective in achieving what it was intended to do. Bjørn Lomborg explains why it is actually worse than if it were carried out by millions of people since more CO2 will be released as a result of that. He used many statistics and information from respected companies to support his theories about the results of Earth Hour and used many examples to show how electricity is something to be cherished, not frowned upon. In addition, Lomborg also uses statistics to persuade his readers that solar and wind powered electricity is not a good way to go if people want to improve global electricity production efficiency. He says that it is expensive, unreliable, and only a really small percentage of all electric energy is produced through these means.