Leave the lights on

Re: Not Too Bright, Bjorn Lomborg, March 22. On Saturday evening, one billion people will sit in the dark for one hour and convince themselves that they are doing something useful. The problem is that they won’t be.

“Earth Hour” isn’t about protecting the environment so much as promoting the new world “religion” of “environmentalism.” This is merely its “Good Friday” moment, where the high priests of this movement expect us to pay a symbolic penance for the “sins” of living in an industrial society and reaping its benefits at the “expense” of the environment. I’m appalled at this. So come “Earth Hour,” my bride and I are going to do what we always do: live our lives as we choose too, and not as the “high priests” of this new religion and their green “god” think we should. Marion and Steven Eleftheriadis, Toronto.

Switching off the lights in a cold climate such as Canada’s has an immediate effect of increasing CO2 production. Electric lights produce heat as well as light, and are a significant part of the heating system of one’s house. Switching them off removes this heat source, which means, in turn, that the central heating system will crank itself up a notch to compensate, burning more oil or gas.

An analysis of the benefit of replacing incandescent light bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescent lamps was published by researchers at the École Polytechnique de Montreal in 2007. It came to the conclusion that “the benefits in terms of electricity production and greenhouse gas reduction in Canada will be far less than first expected.”

Roger Graves, North Gower, Ont.