"Earth Hour" is coming up this Saturday evening, and you may have noticed certain businesses, celebrities, and environmental groups urging "lights out" for an hour, ostensibly to call attention to global warming. You may think this sends the wrong message - to plunge us all into darkness as a rejection of technology and human achievement. We sure thought so. Or, as my colleague Michelle Minton and others have aptly noted, it's Earth Hour every day in Communist North Korea, where people lack basic freedoms, as well as affordable, reliable access to many human achievements, such as electricity.
Good news is, there's now an alternative to Earth Hour - it's called Human Achievement Hour! A celebration of all that humans have accomplished. What can you do to participate?
- In honor of HAH, leave your lights on, Saturday, March 27, at 8:30pm!
- Tweet or blog about it, and let us know about how you observed that hour. (#HAH2010).
- Follow HAH on Twitter, Twitter.com/hah_2010
- Join HAH on Facebook
- If you're in the Washington, DC area, join us for a cocktail hour celebrating HAH.
- Read Michelle Minton's commentaries on specific human achievements, on Openmarket.org
Happy Human Achievement Hour!
Best,
Christine
Communications Director
Competitive Enterprise Institute
202.230.4937
Contacts:
Michelle Minton, 202-340-7078
Richard Morrison, 202-331-2273
Force of Darkness “Earth Hour” Challenged by Power of Light “Human Achievement Hour”
CEI Announces 2nd Annual Celebration of Human Achievement
Washington, D.C., March 19, 2010—The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading free-market think tank, will celebrate the Second Annual “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Saturday, March 27, 2010. The one-hour celebration coincides with “Earth Hour,” an hour in which governments, individuals, and corporations will dim or shut off lights to symbolically renounce the environmental impacts of modern technology.
“Earth Hour’s creators suggest that human inventions and technology are a problem, but we see the ability to create and innovate as the ultimate resource,” says Human Achievement Hour founder and CEI Policy Analyst Michelle Minton. “Environmental challenges will not be solved by turning off our lights and symbolically hiding in the dark,” Minton added. “If anything, we should be looking to technology and innovation to help solve environmental problems.”
Just like last year, countless individuals, organizations, agencies and businesses will be celebrating Human Achievement Hour without even realizing it. Just by not shutting down their lights, operations and stores, they will be acknowledging that productive effort and the pursuit of happiness are a better alternative than sitting in the dark.
In addition to the observance of Human Achievement Hour, wherever people may find themselves around the world, CEI will be hosting a happy hour event outside of Washington, D.C.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
7:30pm-10:00pm
2915 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, Virginia
703-248-9888
MORE RESOURCES: Watch the video “Celebrate Human Achievement Hour,” follow us on Twitter and join the Facebook group.
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CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.
2 comments:
The Near-Senile Magnetic Cloud Speaks Out of Turn During a Mating Ritual [Today's News Poem, March 19, 2010]
http://toylit.blogspot.com/2010/03/near-senile-magnetic-cloud-speaks-out.html
“... Bangladesh, to the vast, such as the US; from the familiar - England, New Zealand... What unites such a disparate group is concern about climate change. They have all signed on to participate in Earth Hour next Saturday.”
--JENNIE CURTIN, Sydney Morning Herald, March 20, 2010
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/earth-hour/nations-large-and-small-join-climate-change-campaign-20100319-qmay.html
What can't forget cannot recall
It seems. The rest of you converge
Your nebulae in mating brawls,
While memories in me emerge
Of stately solar births. With gas
It starts... but then the sparking burst!
You judge importance by its mass.
Like you, I watched the giants first;
But atoms lust as well and link
Together. Once I saw some chains—
Of acid really—learn to think.
Astonishing! I watched the brains
Of little nothings come aware.
And every time I noted one
It decomposed. I learned to care
For trifles; loved their micro-sun.
Though starved of energy, their life
Replenished me. Their sense of four
Dimensions, crude. Their frantic strife
Would end before I'd even store
My memories. They loved our kind
You know, and envied us as well.
They prayed to us, to me to find
A way to save them all—to quell
Their rightful fears of death. I said
I care for them: they called me God.
With speech, I seemed to end their dread.
They scattered, left their rocky clod.
Before explosions killed that race,
Before they wandered outer space,
They hoped to find enlightened grace.
It's there, I said, in every place.
http://toylit.blogspot.com
Don't be a chicken. Free speech is one of the highest achievements of all. If you don't agree, why do you have a blog?
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