No One Stands Up Against Stupidity

Sydney "goes dark" to draw attention to global warming. Read the story - the whole idiotic thing. If you don't feel the rage rising in you, clustering in a little knot of fury between your sholders, then you need a serious, urgent cynicism booster. (For a good one, check out Audiobuffer channeling Gordon Gekko).

First, a quick review of how ludicrous this is. The goal is to promote a campaign to have people turn out lights, computer monitors, etc. when not in use. The Sydney gov't claims it "could" cut Sydney's electricity use by 5% annually. Anyone familiar with gov't studies knows that number is probably greatly inflated. Besides, do people really respond to government ad campaigns? How much have we spent on the anti-weed ads?

Suppose it does cut Sydney's electricity use by that amount. Will it matter? Of course not - carbon is a global concern and China looks like it increases its usage by that amount every few minutes.

But there's a more fundamental problem. Opposition to global warming centers on stupid little tricks like this that cut down energy use - the idea being that the way to address global warming is to oppose energy use. That's a position guaranteed to fail. In most of the world, increased energy use is directly correlated to increased happiness. People getting TVs who didn't have them; people getting air conditioners who didn't have them; people farming with tractors instead of mules. Etc etc. That's where carbon's coming from, going forward; and how on earth do people think they're going to get in the way of the increasing spread of basic modern comforts?

The way we're going to solve global warming isn't by positioning ourselves against the things that make people happy. It's by doing what we've done best for the last millenium - inventing our way out of the problem. Geoengineering, baby. Check it out.