Earth Hour Is Bogus
Earth Hour totally misses the point about energy conservation and environmental effects. It’s a bogus event. The promotion of self-sacrifice by lowering utility for an hour - how much energy can we save if we lower our standard living for one hour - just has a bunch of people convinced they are helping the environment or moving in the right directions when they aren’t. They just feel good about living in the dark for an hour and pretend like they are part of the solution. It is the opposite message that should be sent. The only thing we can learn from Earth Hour is that if we use less resources, we get less utility. That is easily achieved by producing less and consuming less (i.e. a shrinking economy). Smaller economy means less consumer utility and shrinking social programs. Fewer IPods, less access to health care. We can get these wonderful results quite easily by voting for the party with the most destructive economic policies (i.e. statist policies that reduce free trade in favor of protectionism, tax a lot, or have some great spending plans for social or military programs).
On the other hand, the financial benefits for conserving energy and other resources (i.e. water) are enormous. These incentives get bigger with rising energy prices, Pigouvian (i.e. carbon) taxes and cap-and-trade programs. We need fewer (i.e. no) central planners telling us what type of light bulbs to install in our homes, to run our recycles through the dishwasher, or providing subsidies to companies with some sort of alternative energy idea, or that we should be worried about the standby energy our electronic devices use. The most efficient thing and the only thing the government needs to do to lower carbon emissions to lower is raise taxes on energy and provide carbon credits. People will choose where to live, what car they drive, etc. based on the costs.
A lot of businesses are located in BC because electricity is inexpensive here (even at twice the price its a good deal). Cheap electricity is a huge location subsidy. Its even the same price on islands where the cost to transmit it is high. Even with the planned rate increases electricity will be cheap.
As long as we have cheap (below the market clearing price) electricity in BC, we can pretend we are relatively green or clean, because at the margin every kWh we use in BC means somebody somewhere else is producing a kWh of electricity from burning coal.
To truly play our part (if we really must, I am not sure we should) in reducing the external effects of our use of resources, we should in BC:
- Completely deregulate the price of electricity, and allow for regional pricing. This will hurt us economically - there is no free lunch. A lot of people earn their livings in BC working for companies who rely on the location subsidy of really cheap electricity.
- Leave it up to other jurisdictions to do their own thing. If Alberta wants to tax carbon emissions, let them. That will affect the price of electricity if they do.
- Cap and trade carbon emissions (we seem to be on our way) and credits for credits for permanently sequestered carbon. Or tax emissions.
- Refrain from subsidizing alternative energy projects or companies like solar, wind, etc. Innovation is happening in these fields anyway due to economic incentives.
Companies and individuals will respond to more expensive energy with energy conservation measures. It really is that simple.