Fiat Lux: the Aftermath of Earth Hour

I enjoyed my shiny heat balls, and some other folks were likewise having fun.  Check it all out after the fold:

• Tim Blair gleefully sums up his eco-sins: "Light count here: 57 Gaia-smashing globes o’ death. Plus: dishwasher, washing machine, two laptops and two plasmas all running at maximum extremism."
• Ed Driscoll kept his lights on.
• Ross McKitrick, professor of economics, celebrates better living through technology and human achievement.  Here's piece of it:

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. 

... The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. 

Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity. 

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too. 

I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

• One individual takes the cake, though ... by purposefully renting four rotating movie spotlights that could be seen for miles in the sky.