Environment

Loud Noises – Earth Hour Edition

Tonight at 8:30 is Earth Hour when everyone around the world is supposed to turn out their lights for one hour in order to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

But throughout the wingnut blogotubes, they've decided to turn on all of their lights as a too-clever way of cancelling out Earth Hour. Here's another wingnut who's offering a list of suggestions for how to go about doing this. Utterly brilliant suggestions like:

8. Burn tires

Smart! Your neighbors will enjoy the fumes and odor coming from your hillbilly bonfire.

24. Leave your oven open

And maybe climb in.

34. Turn on your air purifier

Yes. You're going to need it when your house fills with fumes, gasses and stink from your open oven and burning tires in the yard. Incidentally, if the air is so clean and unpolluted, why the air purifiers?

A couple of years ago, there was a website where you could pay to have a tree ripped out of the ground in order to cancel out the purchase of Carbon Offsets. I'm happy to report that the website no longer exists. Awww. I wonder why.

Earlier today, I received a wingnut e-mail with the following post script:

By the way, don't forget to turn out your lights tonight. Someone's going to have to make up for all the extra electricity I will be using.

I have a few more suggestions for any wingnuts who might want to cancel out Earth Hour.

1. Just burn a stack of money.
2. Write a check for $100. Send directly to hostile Middle Eastern Islamic petro-governments. (Don't forget to dot your "i's" with little hearts.)
3. Fill up your SUV with gasoline. When your tank is full, proceed to fill up the passenger compartment, too.
4. Why only an hour? Leave all your shit on for a month! Enjoy your bills.
5. Buy a carton of smokes. Smoke all of them in your backyard while using your burning tires as the world's most awesome hillbilly lighter. When your hair and face accidentally catch fire, your burning flesh and hair will cause more delicious pollution! Once you're good and sick from the fumes and smoking an entire carton of cigarettes and, you know, burning your face, pass out on top of the burning tires.

Even if there wasn't any consensus on the causes and effects of the climate crisis (and there is), what's the point of counteracting Earth Hour? Take the science and environmentalism out of the equation and we still have a pretty serious energy crisis. Don't the wingnuts remember their ridiculous "drill baby drill" chant? That was a response to there being not enough affordable fuel to go around. But whatever -- crank up your utility bills if it'll make you happy, wingnuts. It's your money.

Adding... This NY Times article is incredibly stupid. Yes, sometimes new lightblubs don't work. Guess what else? Sometimes there are a couple of eggs in a carton that are cracked. Ever had to exchange an electronic device that was damaged in shipping? And by the way, I have a crapload of CFLs in my house. Every single bulb I've purchased worked just fine.