At 8:30 pm, much of the committed environmental crowd shut off all of the lights to their homes, their businesses, and perhaps, for some, their cave fires. You see, today, March 26, 2011, is a celebration of earth hour. Between 8:30 and 9:30, people will be dancing in the dark like so many primitives before them. The princes and princesses of darkness will tell their tribes of the evil that stalks the earth and forces innocent people to flip wall switches, to turn dimmers up and to pull chains or rotate stems that illuminate the world in defiance of nature.

Since 2007, beginning in Sydney, Australia, for one solitary hour a year, a global tribe shuts of every light source they can legally shut down and dance in the joy of darkness. This is a celebration of man fighting back against the achievement of man in order to bring about an end to our reckless rush to global warming and worldwide climate change. Of course, it is permitted to leave running heating systems in cold climates and air conditioners where warmth prevails while the lights are turned off. And let’s not forget home computers, tablets, flat screen television sets, radios, stereo sytems, telephones, gas or electric stoves, dishwashers, warm or hot showers, hand washing, toilet flushing and septic or flood pumps. I mean, if you are going to demonstrate the need to save energy, then why not include everything, say, for a week or two. Let’s not go to work. Imagine the energy saved by shutting down big businesses and keeping gasoline or natural gas driven vehicles off of the road. Apparantly, for the time being, however, home and apartment microclimate change devices are permitted during this sacrificial hour of darkness.

This activist participation is no small affair, mind you. It was estimated that in 2007, 2.2 million individuals and more than 2000 businesses gathered in a global circle to sing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over”. This year, rumor has it that these loin cloth wearing, moon howling, cave dwelling Neanderthals actually tried to dig up “Dandy” Don Meredith to sing their theme song; however, it has been rumored that the John Edwards camp got him first.

Like the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights organization, I prefer to use this time to celebrate the “Human Achievement Hour“. The lights in my home are all lit up, as are all of my porch, entry and security lights. Not a single bulb is a compact fluorescent lamp. Every lamp inside and outside of my home contains a conventional incandescent bulb based on Thomas Edison’s design improvement on a 50 year old idea. In fact, I’ve been stockpiling incandescent light bulbs to sidestep the Bush Bulbs.

People originally moved to incandescent lamps as a safe alternative to oil lamps and candles which were responsible for countless fires, injuries and deaths. Today’s new high tech, low energy CFLs are portable hazardous material accidents waiting to happen, and people can’t wait to introduce a life altering and deadly neurotoxin into their homes and the lives of their children. So this time, we are not moving to a new product for safety, but we are endangering our own health and the health of our children to save energy, to save whales, polar bears, plant species and frogs because some scientists and politicians with dubious reputations claim that we must change or die.

Meanwhile, many of these same people who want us to turn out the lights based on their scientific beliefs are out shopping for Geiger counters to measure for trace amounts of radiation above background emanating from Japanese nuclear power plants. This reminds me of the proposed ban on dihydrogen monoxide that Penn and Teller encouraged as a joke. The difference is that there is nothing funny about the irrational fears of radiation risks half a world away. I suppose irrational fear is to be expected when you live in a cave and refuse to celebrate the many comforts brought about by advances in science and industry through the achievements of ordinary men engaged in extraordinary activities.

Even more incredulous is the run on physicians and government agencies for potassium iodine tablets. Fortunately those sources are loathe to administer or prescribe them unless there is a legitimate need. However, may people are buying black market stores and putting themselves and their families at risk because without a genuine radiation threat this drug is more likely to cause more harm than good. I find this juxtaposition of joy for one hazardous situation (CFC use) and fear of a far lesser (radiation exposure) astounding.

Turning off lamps for “earth hour” is a useless activity that does absolutely nothing for managing energy generation and use. It is anti-technology and marks several of man’s most remarkable achievements as evil. This is a fundamentally immoral position because it is dishonest at best.

It is not only moral for man to strive to make his world more comfortable and inhabitable; it is his fundamental quest in pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To disparage what Thomas Edison accomplished to ease some of the miseries that burdened mankind is obscene. As noted, he didn’t accomplish this feat alone. What he created was put together on the back of other inventors and scientists working on electricity projects for over 50 years.

Most people build their success on the knowledge and discoveries of others who preceded them. That is the glory of man – he has the ability to recognize reality, to identify existents and use existents to classify and form concept and abstractions that can them be put to use by people with creative and rational minds.

Anyone can attack the accomplishments of others. It is an easy thing to do because no person, no invention and no creation are ever perfect out of the box. In fact, a lot of products remain imperfect well beyond their introduction to the world at large. But, then again, most people never live full and perfect lives; so, why would anyone with a rational mind ever expect perfection in anything man invents or creates?

To offer such criticism and to attack persons who accomplished or created things no other person was able to do or dared to do is not only unjust; it is morally repugnant and evil. Edison’s light bulb is not as good as we would like it to be in terms of efficiency, but you don’t need to air out a room, cut out a piece of carpet or avoid using a vacuum cleaner to deal with a dropped bulb that breaks. You don’t have to worry about a buildup of mercury over time robbing your newborn or toddlers of their mental or physical capabilities as they go through rapid cell division and growth while using the less efficient but safer incandescent bulbs. Why not just go back to candles? Better yet, why not just move back into caves?

Celebrate the achievements of man and efforts to bring better health, comfort and wealth to the masses by turning on all of your lights. Make your support for achievement visible. Pull up your shades and dance near your windows to remind others of how special human beings can be and will be by building on what we’ve been given and doing the very best we can to build well, albeit, imperfectly.