the lights for an hour will save the planet (though that would be a neat
trick).
We don’t need to all become Luddites and renounce
technology and the
power that enables it as some kind of great Satan that needs to be
vanquished. Technology requires power and it always will and there is
nothing wrong with that.
The problem as I see it rests with the fact that
industrialized nations have not found the way to produce mass
quantities of electrical power without significant environmental
impact. If we had say the promise of clean and pure fusion power then
perhaps the need for an Earth Hour would not exist. Fusion however
doesn’t exist outside of weapons, advanced research models and oh yeah
the Sun. A few electrical cars on the roads wouldn’t be a bad thing
either.
The world is what it is though — and the Inconvenient Truth – is that our thirst for power is destroying the planet.
I’ve signed up on the main EarthHour.org website
in support of the global Earth Hour effort. At the very least the mass
attention the issue is getting may help to spur people, governments and
technology to find better ways to generate and use power.
No, I won’t ever buy ‘carbon offsets’ but yes I will virtualize what I
can, turn off servers when I can, use VoIP and collaboration tools
instead of flying and/or driving when I can. Technology is not the
demon that created the power problem, but it could be the angel that
saves it.
