Cafe Hayek

"Earth Hour" and the Dark Ages

The World Wildlife Fund arranged today's "Earth Hour" -- a pledge by many people from around the world to turn off lights for an hour.  The following is from a page on the WWF website:

Earth Hour is a global event created to symbolize that each one of us, working together, can make a positive impact on climate change - no matter who we are or where we live.

Created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, Earth Hour has grown from a single event into a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 35 US cities will participate, including the US flagships--Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Earth Hour brings together communities, local governments, corporate and nongovernmental organizations to heighten awareness about climate change and to inspire our nation to take practical actions to reduce their own carbon footprints.

Reading about the WWF's "Earth Hour" -- and hearing on the radio and t.v. too many mindless endorsements of this stunt, and seeing Google's special black "Earth Hour" design for its opening page today -- I sent the following letter to Carter Roberts, President of the WWF:

Dear Mr. Roberts:

You and members of your organization worry that industrialization and economic growth are harming the earth's environment.  I worry that the intensifying hysteria about the state of the environment - and that the resulting hostility to economic growth - might harm humankind's prospects for comfortable, healthy, enjoyable, and long lives.

So I commend you on your "Earth Hour" effort.  Persuading people across the globe to turn off lights for one hour supplies the perfect symbol for modern environmentalism: a collective effort to return humankind to the dark ages.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

By the way, of course, the WWF should award some special prize to the North Korean government, for that government keeps North Koreans not in any meager "Earth Hour," or even "Earth Day," but in what WWFers might call "Earth Decades" -- very little light ever.  This picture of the Korean peninsula speaks volumes -- the Dark Ages today; a society keeping its carbon footprint tiny.  Of course, in doing so it keeps itself also desperately poor, often even to the point of starvation.

The Festival of Freedom

Passover is almost here. It marks the first time that a people revolted against tyranny and recognized that no human authority is absolute.

The Economics of Religion

My colleague Larry Iannaccone applies economics to religion. What does that mean exactly? He assumes that people are rational even when they choose to make the sacrifices that most religions demand. That leads to insights about religion's special role in producing cohesiona nd community. He studies the role of state religions in reducing competition among denominations and finds that competition produces better outcomes for consumers. You can find some of Larry's many fascinating insights in this EconTalk podcast. (You don't need an iPod to listen).

The next edition of EconTalk will be an interview with Walter Williams next Monday.

Most Depressing Fact Encountered Today

Here's a depressing fact.

[In Britain] in a 2005 BBC Radio poll listeners voted Karl Marx "the greatest philosopher of all time.".... Marx received 28 percent of the votes cast, more than Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Kant combined.  David Hume came second with 13 percent.

This from page 92 of Tony Judt's essay "Goodbye to All That?" appearing in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books (Sept. 21, 2006).

Free Donors and Save Lives

Here's the second in my series of articles, published in my column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, on the case for legalizing free-market sales of human kidneys.

Monstrous Brutality

One of the things that Europeans -- especially eastern Europeans -- do better than Americans is use the term “liberalism” properly.

I never describe myself as “conservative” – for I am in no way, shape, form, or content conservative. I am liberal through and through.

But, of course, in the U.S. the word "liberal” has been appropriated by welfare statists. So, except in very limited company, I cannot here at home describe myself as “liberal” without being wholly misunderstood. Too bad, for liberal I am.

And it’s the liberal in me that is sickened, distraught, and enraged at this recent murder in Iran. Tom Palmer describes the atrocity, and I second all that he says.

The victims were two young men whose crime was to make love to each other. The murderers are fellow Iranians who hung these men for their ‘offense.’

I can only try to imagine the twisted, sick notions infecting the minds of those who believe that people should be killed for having consensual sex – minds as far from liberal as minds can be – minds rooted not in civilization but in mysticism and ignorance that produce only lethal certainty – minds belonging not to any creatures deserving to be called human, but to monsters.

The greatest blessing of liberalism isn’t material prosperity or a wide franchise; it’s a civilization that does not tolerate intolerance of peaceful people.