Things to consider during Earth Hour (March 25)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Just when you think the fringe of the environmental movement and its political supporters may have wrung their sponges dry of goofy notions, along comes Earth Hour, which will be observed Saturday.
You will know it’s Earth Hour when some of the big cities around the world turn off their lights for an hour, to symbolize the need to reduce energy consumption and the greenhouse gases which generation of electricity produces. Don’t go anywhere during that hour, or you are likely to bang into someone, or someone will mug you.
Earth Hour will be noticeable for its publicity value, but it will do nothing to demonstrate what life might be like if we actually shut down enough coal-fired plants and stopped burning enough gasoline to make a difference.
If you really want to do something for the environment, here is what you can do — but all of you will have to do it:
Unplug your computers.
Unplug your refrigerators.
Unplug your televisions and radios and microwaves.
Shut off your furnaces.
Unplug your air conditioners and swamp coolers.
Put your cars, trucks and tractors up on blocks.
Don’t go to work, or shopping, or to school or church unless you can walk there.
Throw away every gas and electric power tool.
Disconnect the power from your sprinkling systems.
If you do all that, you will actually prevent the burning of fossil fuel in large enough quantities to make a difference, perhaps to slow global warming, if in fact it can be slowed at all.
It would return us to what life was like at the end of the 19th century, when, well, global warming was under way, in spite of our ancestors’ best efforts not to cause it.
Think about that Saturday as the lights dim.
