Last night I overheard some teenage girls making a ruckass during the Hour of Darkness garbage proposed for 830PM Saturday night. They stood adjacent to a freeway overpass, and they were trying somehow to "inspire" drivers on the freeway to heed this asinine event. For several reasons I took occassion to their ignorance and decided to comment on the banality of their exercise in futility.
Their encouragement took the form of cursing and cadjolling. Instead of giving people a positive reason to participate, advocates of this event will as these girls result to personal attacks and profanity against those who choose not to participate.
Ironically, the target audience of their efforts cannot possibly acquiesce to their request as they drive down the freeway with their lights on. Obviously ignorant of the dangers, these girls stood alongside the freeway asking drivers to turn their lights off at night on the freeway. If the girls weren't careful, they could have been killed. If the girls were successful, they might have occassioned the death of someone else.
Fact of the matter is, these girls were obviously ignorant of the minute impact they were having on the whole. What hubris of man to assume that he can change the climate of a world much more complex and powerful than he. We can't predict the weather a week ahead of time; how can we predict climate as a whole next year, next century, or millenia hence? How can we alter it? Outside of the microcosm of a small experimental cylinder, we cannot control anything, and the little bit of difference a single person's reduction in use might exert on the earth as a whole is statistically significant. Do you know how many more coyotes, pronghorn, desert tortoises, and the like could be killed by motorists on NV roadways on any given night if motorists drove around with their lights off?
People want to feel like they're doing something that matters, so they sign up when Hollywood starlets and rich CEOs from WWF, the Sierra Club, and other organizations endorse something. However, these people don't actually do anything to change the world. They pretend for a living, or in the latter cases, they convince other people to do it themselves. Most of them would never roll up their sleeves to muck out a stable or help an old lady change a flat. They want you to do the work, to pay the costs, to fit the bill, and give them the credit.
In the end, the irony is that if we don't use the energy someone else will. If we don't burn the oil and coal, China will, and they have zero environmental controls and regulations in place which means that if other countries burn the fossil fuels, there will be MORE total pollution than if they were burned in our country, fewer American jobs, and more suffering in general in the world. Listening to Hollywood starlets who PRETEND to do something all day instead of actually contributing to society will not deliver us to the promised panacea. These people say whatever their employers tell them to. They work for the highest bidder. They are, in other words, paid to lie.
Don't change society for a lie. Don't pass dangerous laws predicated on half truths and whole lies. There's too much danger to risk that.
