Earth Hour: No Thanks
Ross McKitrick:
I was recently asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here is my response, edited slightly for readers outside this area.
I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading. Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water. Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. That’s how we developed.
The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it is nothing more than an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It invites people to become sanctimonious do-gooders by turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in service of some ill-understood abstract concept of “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of electricity. People who want to do without electricity in service of some symbolic solidarity with nature should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.
I don’t want to go back to nature. Haiti just went back to nature. For humans, living in “Nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work to end poverty and disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s despite the expansion of industry and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization is something to be ashamed of.
Ross McKitrick Professor of Economics University of Guelph
h/t: Linda at The Great Pumpkin
Smackdown – Pierre Poilievre Gives Iggy A Diggy
OfficiallyScrewed:
Ann Coulter has entered Hansard. The Smackdown is italicized below.
Mr. David McGuinty (Ottawa South, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the darling of the reform-conservative-republican movement really outdid herself last night in Calgary. By addressing Canadian diversity, Ann Coulter said that diversity is not an advantage to a country like Canada. “It’s not a strength”, she continued. Then she went on to compare diversity to cancer. From organizing speeches to putting on cocktails, the Conservative Party’s dirty little fingerprints are all over her Canadian tour.
Will the Prime Minister immediately and publicly condemn Ann Coulter’s outrageous and intolerant views?[...]
H/T: Linda at The Great Pumpkin
It’s over: MPs say the special relationship with US is dead
Michael Smith, Times [UK]:
BRITAIN’S special relationship with the US — forged by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war — no longer exists, says a committee of influential MPs.
Instead, America’s relationship with Britain is no more special than with its other main allies, according to a report by the Commons foreign affairs committee published today.
[...]
Isn’t ‘Smart Power’ cool?
Palin: Media ‘lies’ about links between tea parties, violence
By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico:
Firing back at critics who say that she and other conservatives had encouraged harassment of House Democrats who supported the healthcare overhaul, Sarah Palin Saturday ripped the media for casting her and tea party activists as violent.
“When we talk about fighting for our country, let’s clear the air right now about what we’re talking about,” she told an estimated 20,000 tea partiers gathered for a rally in a windswept desert lot about four miles north of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s tiny hometown. “We’re not inciting violence. Don’t get sucked into the lame-stream media lies.”
Palin said “violence isn’t the answer.” She said “our vote is our arms” and encouraged activists not to be discouraged by the passage of the Democratic healthcare overhaul bill last week, but rather to channel their energies into defeating congressional Democrats who supported the legislation.
[...]
Now that’s odd. I posted an AP article earlier which, among other things, happened to record the crowd around 7,000 whereas this article records 20,000.
David Litman at the UN-HRC
h/t: Vlad Tepes
As Accusations of ‘Violence’ Flow, Let’s Take a Look At the Record
Posted by Penny Nance, BJ:
There have been accusations of violence flying everywhere since the dreadful healthcare bill was passed on Sunday night. It’s certainly true tensions are running high, just like they have been for an entire year. And for good reason. Many of our freedoms as Americans were stripped away when healthcare passed. But are the threats of violence just a charade to distract Americans from learning about what the massive healthcare bill really does? I think so.
Could you imagine what would happen if someone set fire to, say, Nancy Pelosi’s church? (Does she even go to church?)
[...]
Proof Harper and his faux Conservatives are unaquainted with truth telling
Canadian Human Rights Commission to expand despite rumoured job cuts
The cost of voting in Trudeau and successive Liberal idiots
Police search for violent offender just hours after his release
Electric Green Waste
By Bruce Thompson
Green initiatives are costing hard-pressed Americans billions of dollars in the form of higher utility bills and squandered investment in inefficient electric power generation.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is about to institute the first of four rate increases for electric power planned to take effect within the next year. The increases are expected to increase power costs for businesses by 21% to 22%. Residential customers will see increases ranging from 8.8% to 28.4%.
The money generated by the increase would enable [Los Angeles Mayor] Villaraigosa to carry out a longtime political promise: securing 20% of the DWP’s power from renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy, by Dec. 31.
The political purpose of this is to replace coal fired generation with “green power.” The DWP website has a link to a report detailing its existing generation sources. It has a total of 6,991 MW of “net dependable capability,” of which 1,515 MW is coal-fired and 285 MW is from renewables and distributed generation. Therefore, “going green” would require decommissioning about 21.6% of the existing dependable capability. The question ratepayers ought to be asking is “why?”
Let us examine the largest coal-fired power plant. It is Intermountain Generating Stationoperating report located near Delta, Utah. LADWP’s share of its output is 1,038 MW. The 2009 provides this summary:
[...]
The consequences of the US-Russian START treaty
Aaron Gee, AT:
Rogue states like Iran continue to strive for nuclear weapons in defiance of “words that matter.” Such words didn’t stop the rogue state of North Korea from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and now it is threatening to use them against the United States. Is this anytime to signal to the world that we are willing to pull back on anti-missile technology and defensive weaponry?
[...]
Earth Hour
Hey folks it’s Earth Hour Day or is that Earth Day Hour or an Hour on Earth or something …
So, be sure to join in by turning on your lights for an hour tonight from 8:30 – 9:30 p.m. Actually, I think you might also consider running an appliance or two. Let’s try to suck the energy right out of the grid – yah!
Why The Democrats “Appear” Anxious To Willingly Risk Being Thrown Out Of Office Over Their Radical Socialist Agenda…
By: Kab Laughridge, AmericanRationale:
At the time of this writing, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a favorability rating of 11%, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a favorability rating of a whopping 8% and President Barack Hussein Obama has recently hit a record low approval rating of 44% after posting the largest first year drop in approval of any President in our
nations history.So the question begs: How is that these people are exuding levels of arrogance that are abnormally high even by their elite standards? Do they not see the polls that clearly show the Democratic Party being all but destroyed in the upcoming mid-term elections? Of course they do, and they couldn’t care less. The reason for this bizarre reaction to such dire warnings is that the fringe-left elite “know” exactly how they are going to place a lock on all future national elections and in light of that knowledge they are celebrating early.
Their big “secret weapon”? …………Amnesty.
[...]
Marxism: A Study In Slacker Mentality
By Bill Turner, CFP:
Generalissimo Obama is the prototypical slacker. He hung out, smoked dope and did little or nothing in college, or so we are led to believe, as he won’t release his transcripts and no one remembers him. He managed to do little or nothing as a united States Senator, voting present more than yea or nay on legislation.
[...]
A City of Two Tales
Richard N. Weltz, AT:
Jerusalem has been much in the news these days as President Obama has used the announcement of a procedural step in the eventual construction of 1,600 housing units as a reason to excoriate and humiliate Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu over the past week, ending with a very frosty White House reception and a demand for an Israeli response by tomorrow (Saturday) so that the US can take its “victory” over Israel to the Arab League table in Libya.
Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office continued to throw a blackout on the Netanyahu-Obama meeting, as well as give only very sketchy information about the commitments that the US is demanding of Israel as a precursor to starting the proximity talks with the Palestinians. According to officials, the US wants these commitments by Saturday so it can take them to the Arab League meeting in Libya and receive that organization’s backing for starting proximity talks.
There are, however, apparently two different tales about this city and its capital. The area in question, Ramat Shlomo (Solomon Heights) is described by The New York Times as: “an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on land wanted by the Palestinians for their future capital…”.
That jibes with the view being promulgated by the Obama administration and the Times, to the effect that Israeli perfidy in planning to build additional housing in Ramat Shlomo has been a deal-breaker causing the Palestinians to refuse further participation in negotiations toward a peace settlement.
On the other hand, National Review’s Rich Lowry, writing in The New York Post, explains that:
To call the administration’s reaction to the Israeli announcement of the next stage in planning for 1,600 Jerusalem housing units disproportionate is a rank understatement. It’s perverse.
The housing is in north Jerusalem, in a historically Jewish neighborhood no negotiations have ever contemplated handing over to a Palestinian state.
Israeli blogger “Matzav” goes even a step further, writing from Jerusalem of Ramat Shlomo that:
[...]
Demonizing Everyday Americans
by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, BG:
There appears to be a concerted effort among the political Left and many mainstream media people to demonize and marginalize the expanding citizen-based movement known as the tea party movement. This effort flows from both a fear of what these tea parties represent and a contempt for everyday Americans. But those ordinary citizens are poised to be the ones laughing when it’s all over, when democracy takes its course.
[...]
Anti-Semitic Symbiosis
by Baron Bodissey, FrontPage:
The following article is behind the subscription wall at this month’s New Criterion. The text is an appropriate companion to the subtitled video of the documentary Turban and Swastika, so I have taken the liberty of excerpting some of the key paragraphs here.
National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood appeared at about the same time — in the 1920s — and shared a central ideological imperative: the extermination of the world’s Jews. The National Socialist dream ended in a Berlin bunker in 1945, but the Muslim Brotherhood dream never died.
It is alive and well today, and is gaining ground on all fronts in ways that Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Haj Amin el-Husseini could never have imagined, thanks to a worldwide petroleum-based economy and the self-immolation of Western Civilization.
The excerpts below are taken from “Anti-Semitic symbiosis” by Sol Stern, which reviews the book Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf:
[...]
Transportation Department Embraces Bikes, and Business Groups Cry Foul
“Treating bicycles and other nonmotorized transportation as equal to motorized transportation would cause an economic catastrophe,” warned Carter Wood, a senior adviser at the National Association of Manufacturers. “If put it into effect, the policy would more than undermine any effort the Obama Administration has made toward jobs. You can’t have jobs without the efficient movement of freight.”
Evangelist beats Chicago in court
OneNewsNow:
Jailed Chicago evangelists have had their day in court and will seek injunctive relief against the city.
On July 12, 2008, ten members of Garfield Ridge Baptist Church and Pastor Frank Teesdale traveled to the public St. Symphorosa Family Fest to evangelize by handing out tracks and speaking over a megaphone. Attorney Andy Norman of Mauck & Baker tells OneNewsNow police officers did not like what was going on.
[...]
Budget 2010: We are in danger of ignoring Britain’s real debt disaster
By Charles Moore, Telegraph [UK]:
[...]
The revolution of lowering expectations is only just beginning.
And it could be that revolution is the right word. At the height of our boom, it became fashionable to disdain economic growth. People forgot that the history of the world is one in which most human beings have had a very hard time. A social order which produces steadily, genuinely growing prosperity for most citizens is therefore a great and rare achievement. It was the failure of socialism to ensure such prosperity which lost it the Cold War. But if I were a Communist now, I would be rubbing my hands. The promise of liberal capitalism is that people are free to share in and accumulate the rewards of their labours, and that this, in turn, will help those rewards increase. For millions of people, this is now not happening. Every expectation of intergenerational security on which bourgeois life thrives is blocked. With the public purse as empty as the voters’ pockets, no political party can see the way through this. Ministers, bankers, Parliament have all failed, while looking after themselves comfortably in the process. So the conditions are ripe for a new politics of grievance and anger. Which is where revolutions begin.
Brazilian Couple Receive Criminal Conviction for Homeschooling Verdict despite sons passing law school entrance exams-at ages 13 and 14
LifeSiteNews.com:
Despite the fact that his children passed difficult government imposed tests, and even qualified for law school at the ages of 13 and 14, homeschooler Cleber Nunes and his wife Bernadeth have been slapped with fines equivalent to a total of $3,200 for refusing to submit their children to the Brazilian school system.
However, Nunes told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that he has no intention to pay the fine, although he says that he might have to spend 15-30 days in jail if he does not.
Although homeschooling is common in many countries, including the United States, and is associated with higher levels of academic achievement, it is completely prohibited in Brazil, the government of which has become increasingly intrusive in recent decades following the establishment of a socialist regime in the 1990s.
[...]
U.S. business could be cooked in a VAT
By MARK STEYN:
Ask yourself this: If you impose a sudden 35 percent tax on something, are you likely to get as much of it? Go on, take a wild guess. On the day President Barack Obama signed Obamacare into law, Verizon sent an e-mail to all its employees, warning that the company’s costs “will increase in the short term.” And in the medium term? Well, U.S. corporations that are able to do so will get out of their prescription drugs plans and toss their retirees onto the Medicare pile. So far just three companies – Deere, Caterpillar and Valero Energy – have calculated that the loss of the deduction will add a combined $265 million to their costs. There are an additional 3,500 businesses presently claiming the break. The cost to taxpayers of that 28 percent benefit is about $665 per person. The cost to taxpayers of equivalent Medicare coverage is about $1,200 per person.
So we’re roughly doubling the cost of covering an estimated 5 million retirees.
Now admittedly the above scenario has not been, as they say, officially “scored” by the Congressional Budget Office, by comparison with whom Little Orphan Annie singing “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow” sounds like Morrisey covering “Gloomy Sunday.” Incidentally, has the CBO ever run the numbers for projected savings if the entire CBO were laid off and replaced by a children’s magician with an assistant in spangled tights from whose cleavage he plucked entirely random numbers? Just a thought.
[...]
Anatomy of an MSM smear of tea partyers
John McLaughlin, AT:
We’re being suddenly barraged with a rash of hyper-news reports alleging threats, verbal and physical, by conservative groups and Tea Party members against supporters of Obamacare. Is it just me or does anyone else believe this current hysteria seems just a tad too convenient?
For example, news accounts Thursday told of a coffin left on the lawn “near the home” of Rep. Russ Carnahan (D, MO). An eyewitness account of this event, posted by James Hoft, proprietor of the Gateway Pundit blog, tells what happened:
[...]
Obama ‘acting in an unprecedented and unconstitutional manner’
Harvard Professors Blow the Whistle on Obama in Washington Post: Another sign of Armageddon?
Southern Poverty Law Center Officially Declared “Left-Wing Hate Group”
By Matt Barber:
Though always left of center, the Atlanta-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) once had a reputation as a fairly objective civil rights group. Founded by direct-marketing millionaire Morris Dees and partner Joseph Levin, Jr., in 1971, the SPLC made important and honorable contributions to many of the historic civil rights gains of the 20th Century. According to its own materials, the SPLC was “internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups.”
Alas, “power corrupts,” as the saying goes, and the SPLC, having amassed tremendous power and wealth over the years, has regrettably become corrupt to its core. By way of an ever-escalating wave of “us-versus-them” money-grubbing schemes, today’s SPLC has morphed into a far-left political activist outfit, famous for promoting a panoply of extreme liberal causes.
[...]
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