Fire up those light bulbs for LIBERTY tomorrow at 8:30PM!

The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.

The real meaning of “Earth Hour”, Keith Lockitch

Those wishing to celebrate Earth Hour…do not need to take part in Human Achievement Hour. “Earth Hour is a viable alternative to human achievement hour,” says CEI Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer. “Those who wish to celebrate Earth Hour should sit in the dark, turn off the heat, and breathe as little as possible.”

Around the world tomorrow night (unless you’re one of those feisty rebels in Nashville, from what I’ve heard, though students there are being encouraged to wear black or dark blue tomorrow to promote the ‘blackout’), people are supposed to be shutting out the lights for “earth hour“. Doing so is meant to “cast a vote for earth” and draw attention to the scam that is “global warming”.

We will not be participating.

In fact, my intention is to flip on every freaking light switch in our house in protest and as my way of casting a vote…for liberty. For progress. (Real progress, not Obama’s idea of it.)

This sort of thing is not just indicative of people’s wishing to care for the earth, but it is their demanding that mankind submit to it. Not only is this mindset remarkable hubris, but borderline (if not complete) derangement. Certainly we are to be good caretakers of the planet God has graciously blessed us with, but for one thing, we are to place no other gods before God. We are not to worship the creation instead of its (and our) Creator. Furthermore, God told us to subdue the earth, wisely utilizing its resources to glorify Himself and to provide for ourselves. He told us to have dominion over it, and explained that He had given it and all the living things within it for our own good. Indeed, it was to man and only man God said these things; to the other living things, He only commanded that they be fruitful and multiply. Man alone was given both the authority and the order to take advantage of all earth has to offer. *

Obviously, those participating in tomorrow’s absurd “earth hour” don’t care about this, and some might even revel in turning out their lights as a symbol not only of their solidarity with the planet but as symbolic of flatly (and childishly) rebelling against God the Creator.

There is another angle, though (it is, unfortunately, necessary for conservatives and Christians to point out all of the above as well as the asterisked bit when discussing environmental concerns, because folks tend to think we’re all for endangered whaleburgers and spicy condor wings dipped in cheetah-bald eagle sauce), and Meghan Cox Gurdon explains it perfectly.

On our kitchen bulletin board, we used to have a dog-eared Mercator-style photograph of the world…The image was shot from space at night, and at a glance, it showed where on Earth people could use artificial light when the sun goes down.

You could see the shape of the oceans by the glimmering of electric light along their edges. Large parts of Europe and the United States were lit up like, well, Los Angeles.

The entire length of Japan blazed in the darkness. Africa, partly because of poverty and partly because it’s just so big, had only pinpoints showing areas of concentrated population.

And it was obvious where the border lay between North Korea and South Korea, because north of the 38th parallel everything was pitch black.

As I enjoyed pointing out to the children, this wasn’t a map that showed electricity: It was a picture of progress, prosperity and freedom. For by their darkness, shall ye recognize poverty and tyranny!

But now, this coming Saturday, we’re all supposed to embrace the darkness.

One can’t help but note the symbolism there. Methinks Gurdon didn’t phrase her thought this way accidentally.

On a Web site set up to promote the thing, we’re given a stark choice: “You can VOTE EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour. Or you can vote global warming by leaving your lights on.”

That’s the choice?

Actually, there are plenty of other options. …You might choose to go salsa dancing in a gaily-lit club, so as to enjoy a weekend night out.

Or if you have the misfortune to live in one of the world’s more blighted and corrupt corners, you might have to sit in the usual darkness caused by the usual blackouts wishing for some other engine of carbon dioxide than your own nostrils.

The witty disbelievers at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington have their own idea — a Human Achievement Hour to coincide with Saturday night’s global orgy of dark earthiness.

In a press release, CEI cheerfully applauded organizations such as the Kennedy Center, Wal-Mart, Target and the United States Marine Corps for keeping the lights on (and, in the case of the Marines, for continuing “combat and humanitarian operations around the world”) throughout Saturday night.

“We salute the people who keep the lights on and produce the energy that helps make human achievement possible,” said Myron Ebell, CEI’s director of energy and global warming policy.

Quite right. This Saturday night, I hope you’ll join me in causing a beautiful blaze of light to shine out your windows.

…We can send our own powerful message to Copenhagen: Americans are people of light and progress and innovation, not peasants willing to scrabble about in darkness.

Hear, hear. Us too. And as we sit on our sofa, perhaps watching an old movie or playing a game, we’ll remember to thank and bless God for being so generous with mankind that He gave some men the brilliance to understand the mysteries of electricity and come up with ways for mankind to harness it. It is through God’s graciousness and generosity that man has achieved anything at all.

Furthermore, for those of you complaining that you can’t see stars at night…God gave men brilliance not only to domesticate animals like the horse, but the genius to come up with the miracle of the internal combustion engine. Please stop grumbling and utilize one of these truly fantastic things. We’re more than happy to sit with y’all on our little patio sipping sangria staring at the stars in the summertime, too; though we’re surrounded by large cities, we’ve no problem seeing countless beautiful pinpoints of light in our nighttime sky and quite enjoy the stargazing.

As for those light bulbs…Fire ‘em up!

More common sense:

This “Earth Hour”, leave the lights on at the National Post.

Alternative to Earth Hour from India’s Objectiveman.

“Let’s make sure that the precious inventions that freed the world from darkness are never taken for granted, and especially not destroyed by the anti-man philosophy of environmentalism and “Earth Hour.” Let’s change the tide of the culture by celebrating human achievement and literally fending off the darkness.” at The New Clarion.

* Man was set over creation as its caretaker and curator, and God is not big on muzzling the ox while it treads the grain. Nor was all this a suggestion; it was an imperative. It was His intention that we utilize the natural wealth He infused into the planet for our own benefit as well as His glory (because He glories in the creativity He has given to man). Though the term we find in Genesis for “subdue”, kabash, tends to have conquering, enslaving connotations, that obviously doesn’t fit here; God’s original intention was not for mankind to be locked into some sort of struggle or battle with the earth. Instead, as the NET Bible explains,

The general meaning of the verb appears to be “to bring under one’s control for one’s advantage.” In Gen 1:28 one might paraphrase it as follows: “harness its potential and use its resources for your benefit.” In an ancient Israelite context this would suggest cultivating its fields, mining its mineral riches, using its trees for construction, and domesticating its animals.

The Amplified Bible, um, amplifies this divine command parenthetically as “using all its vast resources in the service of God and man”.