Some of my cynical thoughts on “Earth Hour” tonight are echoed, and then turned up to 11 by Canadian hard SF author, Peter Watts.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of Torontonians will celebrate the event by climbing into their SUVs and driving out to Downsview Park, there to light candles in the darkness. The Eaton’s Center up at Yonge and Dundas is festooned with all sorts of big glossy posters trumpeting their whole-hearted love of Mother Earth. Why, I’ll bet the reduced environmental impact from turning off those lights might even recoup a small fraction of the resources consumed to drive the massive multimedia extravaganza advertising Earth Hour.
Oh, wait. There isn’t going to be any reduction in environmental impact. Not unless the world’s power-generating utilities decide to scale back the fossil fuels they’re burning to reflect a one-time, one-hour tick in the time series.
Yes, I know. It’s only supposed to make “a statement”. It’s supposed to be a symbol. And what does it symbolize, exactly? It symbolizes “hope” — which is to say, our infinite capacity for denial, our unwillingness to restrain ourselves in any meaningful sense, our brain-dead refusal to see the brick wall we’re hurtling towards. It symbolizes the sick fucking joke that is the human race.
That’s where most writers, even the “edgy” ones would finish. Watts is just getting started–he goes on to theorize that part of the problem is that humanity is biologically designed to deal with immediate problems, and doesn’t really have the built-in hardware to deal with long-term problems. It’s an interesting idea–setting aside the cynic for a second, the Romantic in me loves the idea of us struggling as a species to overcome this kind of biological shortcoming, but then the cynic comes back and points out that there is very little evidence of such a struggle.
Then Watts gets really “het up” and commits some prose that would probably get him a visit from DHS, were he an American. I hope he’s not going to any US conventions in the immediate future.
(Have you read Watts’ fiction, by the way? If not, why not–he’s put it up there for you to read for free, and I’m telling you it’s damn good science fiction.)
