Investor's Business Daily, October 1st, 2007
Question: When will San Francisco and Los Angeles look like North Korea? Answer: On Oct. 20, when lights are expected to go out in both cities, leaving them as dark as the benighted regions of the Democratic People's Republic.
The goal of Lights Out is to draw awareness to man-made carbon dioxide emissions that supposedly contribute to a global warming greenhouse effect.
The first Lights Out event was March 22 in Sydney, Australia. That Earth Hour, according to the Los Angeles Times, cut 25 tons of CO2, the equivalent of taking nearly 49,000 cars off the road for 60 minutes.
San Francisco, where the Golden Gate Bridge, the Trans-america Pyramid and Alcatraz will go dark, was next to schedule a citywide blackout. Los Angeles, both city and county, followed. Sites expected to revert to the Stone Age are City Hall, the county Hall of Administration, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Department of Water and Power headquarters and the Port of Los Angeles.
(Apparently, commerce can wait; environmental feel-good games take precedence.)
Naturally, organizers want to go nationwide and are encouraging other cities to, "Show your solidarity by turning out your lights in your hometown on Oct. 20 from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. PDT."
The cities will not require residents to turn off all their nonessential lighting. But they will expect everyone to eagerly comply. Peer pressure will be enormous. Woe to those in left-wing San Francisco and trendy Los Angeles who refuse to participate. It's not hard to imagine dissenters becoming neighborhood pariahs.
But the Lights Out project cannot be ridiculed enough. Nothing of substance will be achieved by blacking out large cities. Fewer CO2 emissions? Not enough to change anything. Man's carbon emissions are 3.4% of the total amount of CO2 put into the skies every year. Going dark in two cities, 10 cities, even 100 cities, won't make a dent.
Moreover, there's no scientific evidence that man's greenhouse gas emissions are making the planet warmer today or will do so in the future. It's a theory, taken seriously by some, yes, but doubted by many others. Global warming alarmists like to say there's a consensus among scientists that backs their claims. But climate change is a charged political issue, not a scientific certainty.
While there's a temptation to simply laugh Lights Out organizers and supporters into deserved irrelevance, there is reason to take the project seriously. Voluntary cooperation is the first step to compulsory participation. It's a way to inure the public to rationing. Can anyone promise that local lawmakers won't say next summer that the 2007 Lights Out night was such a success that they have plans to make it a requirement next October?
Another temptation is to try to stand athwart the stunt. But, as one reader noted in the comment section that followed the Web version of the Times' Lights Out story, maybe we should step aside and let the blackouts serve as a reminder of the miserable post-energy world we'll live in if the global warming alarmists have their way.
