March 30, 2008
Back to the Caves!
Samizdat Thaddeus Tremayne posts the "Earth Lights" pic that we use for the ThreeSources banner and says:
I never get tired of looking at this photograph. It never fails to fill me with wonder and awe at the ingenuity of my species who, against all the odds, have carved these glorious man-made islands of light out of the primordial blackness. Whenever I am heavy of heart, I open up this photograph and stare at it to remind me that, somewhere, there is light and life.
Then he tells the sad tale of "Earth Hour" where cities are turning off the light for an hour to fight global warming. Tremayne continues:
With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.
Heat and light are unalloyed goods to me. Both in moderation of course, but that people are turning off the lights to prevent warming seems a potent presentation of those who would, in Karl Popper's words, "send us back to the caves."
John Rockefeller brought heat and light to poor people; he is considered a robber baron. One thinks of the old bumper sticker: "Ban Mining. Let the bastards freeze in the dark." That's what these people want.