Jeber’s

Earth Hour-sending the wrong message?

I would like to think that any person living on this planet would have some concern for its well-being. It is, after all, the only home we have.

But too often good intentions are wasted on fadish events that provide a feel-good moment but produce no substantial benefits. I suspect the Earth Hour we’re all supposed to participate in tonight is one of those well-meant but ultimately pointless exercises.

Ariel Schwartz sums up my attitude nicely in an article written for Fast Company.

Earth Hour is officially the kickoff for the WWF’s campaign to get world leaders to agree on a global deal at UN climate talks in December 2009, but it has morphed into much more than that. Turning out the lights for that one blessed hour is, according to WWF President and CEO Carter Roberts, “casting a vote in support of the future of the Earth.” Well, if that’s all we have to do to show that we’re in favor of sustainability, sign me up.

The truth is obviously more complicated than that, but there’s a real problem with Earth Hour: one hour of complete darkness is sending the wrong message to anyone who is not a staunch environmentalist. As George Marshall, the founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network, points out in the UK Guardian,  “Asking people to sit in the dark plays very well to a widely held prejudice that ‘the greens’ want us all to go back to living in caves.” Darkness symbolizes fear and negativity (ever seen a depressed teenager dress in all white?) while light symbolizes innovation, creativity, and everything else we love about civilization. There’s a reason that cartoonists put a lightbulb above characters’ heads when they come up with ideas.

Turning off the lights is poor symbolism. We need light, innovators, and creative people to get us through our energy crisis. Awareness isn’t always about cutting back. It’s also about moving forward. So today at 8:30 PM, I’m going to leave the lights on–at least until I leave the room.

It’s not that I refuse to acknowledge the impact human activity has had on our planet. It’s not that I don’t believe in conservation. I work for a company that embraces recycling and reuse. I preach that attitude frequently on our company website.

It’s just that I prefer expending our energy and social activism on efforts that produce sustainable results. I would rather endorse substantial changes in our society that result in a lasting improvement to our ecosphere. I think that Earth Hour fails to meet that criteria.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Earth Hour: Turning out the lights plays into the hands of our critics (guardian.co.uk)
• Can Earth Hour Galvanize the Fight Against Global Warming? (time.com)
• Simply symbolic or smart environmentalism: Earth Hour approaches (sciam.com)
• Blackout for Climate Commitment (netnewsdaily.com)
• Earth Hour Activities For Frugal Family Night (frugaldad.com)

Oh mighty ‘bama, where is thy transparency?

Politically and socially I’m moderate to liberal in my general outlook on life. I’m not so liberal as to have joined the Church of Saint Obama, though McCain was a poor alternative, I thought. Too much was being expected of Obama, and he didn’t do much to bring expectations back down to earth. He was aware of his cult status, his deification.

One of the promises made early and often by the president was transparency in government. That was perhaps the most dramatic and audacious guarantee he made us early on. After the last eight years many of us welcomed the idea of a more visible process. If we’re being asked to pay the bills, we ought to be able to know where the money’s going.

And Obama told us we would see his government working. He was going to make Washington a transparent town.

It appears he may have just broken that promise. How else are we to interpret the following but to conclude it’s business as usual, sadly.

How could this happen?

We were asked to give him a pass on two aspects of his life. To support Obama was to willingly ignore the fact that he was a lawyer and a politician. He may have sounded refreshing, but the substance of Obama is deeply influenced by his love for the law on the federal level. He is a politician and a lawyer, just like Bush was a politician and a lawyer and like Nixon was a politician and a lawyer. Just like Lincoln was a politician and a lawyer.

I can only conclude that the following is an indication of that reality.

There are number of outstanding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for key documents, by groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, and KEI. In one of our FOIA requests, we asked for 7 specific documents, referenced by the exact title and date of the documents. These documents are the proposals for the text of the agreement.

The texts are available to the Japanese government. They are available to the 27 member states of the European Union. They are available to the governments of Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia. They are available to Morocco, and many other countries. They are available to “cleared” advisers (mostly well connected lobbyists) for the pharmaceutical, software, entertainment and publishing industries. But they are a secret from you, the public.

Today we received this letter from the White House, Office of the United States Trade Representative. Our FOIA request was denied on the grounds that the documents are “information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”

Here is a link to a PDF of the denial of the FOIA request.  (Source: huffingtonpost.com)