Earth Hour is one of those feel-good but utterly useless exercises North Americans use to lessen their bizarre guilt for being prosperous.

The whole "Earth Hour" notion is stupid, if you take a moment and actually think about it.

The concept that turning off your lights for an hour will magically stop anything, let alone pollution, is ludicrous.

It's like some weird IQ-destroying virus that destroys a person's ability to think critically.  We desperately need more critical thinkers, not less!

Think about it for a moment.  What do these charlatans ask you to do on "Earth Hour" so you aren't sitting in the dark?

They tell you to light a candle.

Do you realize what a candle is made from?  Do you?

Paraffin.

What is paraffin?  A petroleum product. Do you have any grasp of how much electricity is required to create paraffin wax?

Here's a description of the process:

The feedstock for paraffin is slack wax, which is a mixture of oil and wax, a byproduct from the refining of lubricating oil.

The first step in making paraffin wax is to remove the oil (de-oiling or de-waxing) from the slack wax. The oil is separated through crystallization. Most commonly, the slack wax is heated, mixed with one or more solvents such as a ketone and then cooled. As it is cooled, wax crystallizes out leaving oil in solution. This mixture is filtered into two streams: solid (wax plus some solvent) and liquid (oil and solvent). After the solvent is recovered by distillation, the resulting products are called "product wax" (or "press wax") and "foots oil". The lower the percentage of oil in the wax the more refined it is considered (semi-refined versus fully refined). The product wax may be further processed to remove colors and odors. The wax may finally be blended together to give certain desired properties such as melt point and penetration.

If the goal is to reduce so-called "greenhouse gasses" then why in the world would you want to turn OFF your electrical lights and light dozens of candles?

If you are willing to think about this rationally and turn off your emotional misguidedness for just a few moments, you might realize something.

Not a single electrical generation station in North America will shut down during Earth Hour.  Every single one of those  electrical generation stations will run at exactly the same capacity it did both before and after some mindless feel-gooders turned out their lights for an hour.

Not a single kilowatt hour of power will be "saved".

Not a single African child will be saved by this useless exercise either, although the fear-mongers pandering to North American guilt and shame will no doubt say otherwise.

Earth Hour is Big Business for eco-groups.

It is in their own self-interest to sell this snake oil.  It generates millions of dollars in revenue for them.

If you want to save a child in Africa (or anywhere else in the world) then do something practical and useful. Research non-profit organizations who work in these places and donate your hard-earned cash to them.  Better yet, join one of these organizations' overseas mission trips and do the work yourself.

You can then wear your emotions with pride, for you will actually have done something useful; not turning out your lights and pretending for an hour that you've actually accomplishing something.

You're not.

Electricity is nothing to be ashamed of.  Electricity is perhaps the most amazing technological breakthrough in recent human history.  Electricity transformed our world from darkness into light.  Electricity makes the impossible possible.

Do you really not comprehend your precious Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest could not exist without the technology electricity makes possible?

Wow.

Being technologically advanced is nothing to be ashamed of either, although the "save the earth" weenies will certainly send me buckets of hate mail for daring to call them names.

I might actually cause some mere citizen to think critically about the whole stupid "Earth Hour" scam and the organizations who promote it. I might cost them some previously self-deluded donors.

Oh, the horror!

Hey, if I can stop even a single person from sending money to these charlatans then my job here is well done.

Now, a reminder to all those who love Earth Hour.  If you're going to write me hate mail, remember to do it before you turn off your computer and lights at 8:30!  You wouldn't want to be a hypocritical hater, after all, would you?

This Earth Hour I will do as I do every year on this appointed day and appointed hour: I will turn on every light in the house, blast some great music on the stereo and read all the hate mail the drones too scared, too wracked with North American Guilt and Shame to think for themselves, send me.

After all, someone ought to use all that power.  It's already generated... waiting for an eager individual like me to crank on some more appliances and stopping it from going to waste.

Should be a fun evening!

PS.  If you need a little more enlightenment I would highly recommend Ross McKitrick's essay "Earth Hour: A Dissent".  Here's a taste for those brave enough to think for themselves:

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.