Woo hoo: fewer participated in Earth Hour 2010

From the Ottawa Citizen. I see Sask. and Manitoba's numbers are way down from last year--the prairies rock. (link from ProWomanProLife.)

I won't take any credit for it, but here was my March column in Catholic Insight:


Catholics should observe Earth Hour... in our own special way


I have always believed in good stewardship. From early youth I was taught by my hopelessly old-fashioned parents (born and raised before Vatican II and every other revolution: sexual, green, or what have you) to be careful in my consumption of resources: water, electricity, heat, food. This was long before trendy environmentalism. Back then it involved prudence and temperance, or plain common sense.


My family on both sides boasts several generations of farmers, so I know all about respecting and nurturing the land. But worship it? I don’t think so. Common sense and self-control have left the picture. Now you are not only encouraged, but bullied, threatened, and sometimes punished (with shunning to legal sanctions) if you do not toe the line, and do your bit for ‘Mother Earth.’ (As a Catholic I get to have multiple mothers, but –sorry—the planet is not one of them.)


We suffer fines and increased taxes for not sorting and recycling our garbage; we are scolded for using plastic grocery bags and disposable coffee cups; we are demonized for driving SUV’s. “What would Jesus drive?” went the eco-hippy slogan a decade back. One waggish journalist suggested that instead of a hybrid, Christ would certainly have piloted a gas-guzzling fifteen-passenger van. Twelve Apostles, don’t you know.


It gives evangelizing a whole new meaning, doesn’t it? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. A large number of large Catholic families—including ours— drives those big vans and I don’t feel one bit guilty about it. We produce less carbon per year than the jet-setting, mansion-dwelling Al Gore and his ilk, that’s all I know.


This sort of “assume the position” attitude now adopted by eco-communism goes back to biblical times: the Book of Daniel where the three Jewish youths were cast into the furnace for not bowing down to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue; Esther 3:2, where “only Mordecai did not bend his knee to [Haman],” and 2 Maccabees 7, where seven sons and their mother were martyred for refusing to eat meat at the king’s table. (Though now that meat is eco-evil and verboten, a modern re-telling would probably involve the consumption of the king’s tofu.)


Environmentalism is a religion and rapidly becoming an official state religion at that. It is not far-fetched to imagine a world where the government controls the temperature in your home, or it would be illegal to use certain types of light bulbs and showerheads, or to drive more than a state-sanctioned number of kilometres each day. Good-bye good stewardship, hello totalitarianism.


Earth Hour offers one small opportunity to protest the eco-insanity gripping the western world. This annual ritual isn’t just mass silliness; it’s idolatry. Last year, many journalists and bloggers encouraged readers to protest the hysteria by flagrantly using energy during Earth Hour. Alarmingly, some urban dwellers reported how, in their neighbourhoods, self-appointed enviro-cop children ran up and down the streets searching out non-compliant neighbours, and screaming at them to turn off their lights. It’s reminiscent of the sweet little tykes who informed on their own neighbours—or parents—to the local Nazi or communist regime in power at the time.


Faithful Catholics, therefore, are encouraged to observe Earth Hour, and here is how you can do it. Turn on every light in every room in your house or apartment and leave them on for the entire hour. Open every blind and every curtain. Don’t hide your light under a bushel basket; let it shine onto the bustling street, over the village square, or just into the farmyard. If you still have your Christmas lights up (and most of us likely do), turn them on. If they flash, so much the better. If you dare, make a big sign that says “Christ our Light” and put it in a window. Then be prepared to (politely) evangelize your neighbours.


Earth Hour is not about stewardship; it’s asinine window-dressing for a pagan faith. It is symbolic of embracing a new cause and a new god. It represents bowing down to the darkness and putting your trust in silly human initiative, not in the saving power of Jesus Christ. Do not bow down.


Be as sensibly ‘green’ as you like the other 364 days and 23 hours of 2010. But during Earth Hour this year (and from now on), be sure to declare whom it is you serve.


As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. With our lights on.

Copyright 2010 Mariette Ulrich and Catholic Insight