10 thoughts on “Spoke Too Soon

  1. A few years ago, a friend asked me if I was going to turn out my porch light for Earth Hour. I said no, my porch light is always on. Then, that night, the light bulb burnt out. So I confessed it was off, but not by choice and quickly replaced.

  2. Artificial light is one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind.
    They will not be happy until you are starving and freezing in the dark.

  3. In the 1930s, and English writer named Hugh Walpole researched just how poor a commoner in the north of England was, ca. 1800.
    He was shocked. They had nothing. they worked from sunrise to sunset for just enough money to feed their families coarse bread and peas. They lived in huts made of sticks.
    Anyway, he wrote about how they lit their houses.
    They didn’t.
    Wood was laborous to chop or to gather, and many times it was regulated by the local lord.
    What most people used to light their hovels after dark were “rush lights,” a fibrous swamp rush, dried and soaked in fat or oil.
    The problem was that fat and oil were edible, so (like ethanol from corn) you were burning food. Rush lights were the choice of the poor, because they were cheap, but many times they still could not afford them. A quarter penny would buy a handful of rush lights or a small beer.
    So celebrate the civilization built by the hard working men and women of the world!
    Turn on every light in your house at 8:30!
    You deserve it!

  4. Didn’t even know about this. Most of our neighbors must not have known, either, because our neighborhood was lit up like a normal night. Even the liberals didn’t participate. But then, most liberals just want everyone else to do things like that, not them.

  5. I’ll turn my electric lights off, as soon as someone invents the whale oil Klieg light to light my compound perimeter, and when I can buy the whale oil to fuel them.

  6. Due to a blown transformer in my neigborhood Saturday afternoon, I was an unwilling participant in Earth Hour (almost 3 hours, actually) a few hours early. When the power failed, I took advantage of my capitalist, first-world privilege and notified the power company via the Internet connection that is on battery-backup. And never did I feel guilty.

    One thing that occurred to me is the big push to getting consumers to buy CFLs and LED bulbs in recent years. A 60 W incandescent bulb draws 0.5 A, assuming the voltage is 120 V, but a “60 W-equivalent” LED bulb running at 11 W draws around 0.09 A, or about 18% of the current of the incadescent bulb. Throw in Bush-era laws regulating the manufacture and sale of incadescent bulbs over a certain wattage, and you can see how empty a gesture “Earth Hour” is, especially in recent years. It’s an act that appears to be more sacrificial than it really is. But most of us on this blog already knew that, to leftists, it’s less important to actually solve a perceived problem than to be seen trying to solve a problem.

    But my house may well have beeen visible from space.

    Mitch, if there was a prize for most “energy-conscious” nation each Earth Hour, then North Korea would reign as undefeated grand champion!

  7. Alt;

    I believe that whale oil is still sold in Japan and the Far East. The cost to buy it and have it shipped here, would most likely be prohibitive, not to mention that it will probably take 6 months to get to you.

  8. Sorry I was too busy living my normal life Sat to turn all my lights on for an hour. Next year I will for sure

  9. Put out the lights and make sure that your neighbors see you setting out a dozen or so of those of those cheap, smoky, stinky tiki torches as a substitute for your outdoor lighting.

  10. I practiced an anti-progressive trifecta Saturday night. I 1) expelled greenhouse gasses by 2) providing transportation to others in a privately owned vehicle, while 3) participating in capitalistic exchange of service for money.

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