Earth Hour kicks off in New Zealand

By Ian Wishart
Author of Air Con

As the global Earth Hour kicks off in New Zealand today, and hundreds of people worldwide sit in the dark as a show of solidarity with bats, we have some recommended reading that you can digest now and meditate on later in the dark.

The questions you need to ask yourself as you sit with candles and no heaters, are:

How much carbon dioxide you would generate if you really did give up electric power in favour of candles?

How long would it be before your kids burned your house down?

How romantic would it seem if Earth Hour turned into Earth Week, or even Earth Year?

How do you really fancy taking a 14km bicycle ride to work each winter’s morning?

Are you a follower or an independent thinker capable of assessing the evidence for yourself?

If the answer to the last question was the latter, try reading these background stories:

The evidence on ocean acidification

The evidence on extreme weather events

The evidence on how the media mislead the public because of their own deep-seated belief in climate change

The evidence on how climate scientists duck for cover when a journalist dares to ask hard questions at a media news conference

The evidence on what goes on behind the scenes  among the people trying to persuade the public to believe

And that’s just a little bit of the information that’s out there if you look hard enough.