Originally published as a column in Svenska Dagbladet, 30 March 2019
Tonight is the night for the most important celebration in the global environmental movement – Earth Hour. From 20:30 to 21:30 we’re asked to turn off our lights. This, according to the event’s parent organisation the World Wildlife Fund, is meant to shine a light on important issues such as global warming and biodiversity. It may sound commendable, but unfortunately it mostly serves as a sadly striking illustration of the worst kind of environmental activism. One that focuses more on gestures and protest than on creating and driving positive change.
It all goes wrong from the start, even on the WWF campaign website, where the first image is a candle burning in the dark. In Sweden, we’re expected to turn off clean and virtually carbon-neutral electricity to light candles. Potential cosiness aside, candles emit significantly more carbon dioxide and other harmful particles. Less so if they’re made of stearin rather than the fossil fuel paraffin, but then they risk being made of palm oil, where extraction may have contributed to other negative environmental effects.
Isn’t it childish and petty to complain? It’s only once a year, and if it gets people to pay attention to other environmental issues, surely it’s worth it? Well, not really. At least not if activists let themselves be inspired by WWF for the rest of the year too. The backwardness of swapping clean electricity for lit candles carries over into their positions on other issues.
The UN’s climate body, the IPCC, describes in a 2018 report how more nuclear power is necessary in all conceivable scenarios to minimise global warming. WWF does the opposite, publishing position statements where they scaremonger with emotional arguments and Chernobyl – a disaster scenario that is essentially impossible to replicate with modern reactors.
Nor do they address, speaking of biodiversity, the fact that solar and wind power require between 75 and 360 (!) times more land area per unit of energy than nuclear power. Many scientists argue that GMO crops are both perfectly safe and a key solution in feeding a growing population and fighting famine without claiming even more land. The WWF sows doubt instead. They make unsubstantiated references to health risks and demand “strong precautionary measures” entirely without scientific support. The same unscientific stance can be found at Greenpeace, which in 2016 led 107 Nobel laureates to write a letter to the organisation, urging them to cease their opposition to GMOs.
Large parts of the environmental movement are stuck in misguided dreams about the olden days. They want to solve most problems by going backwards, they oppose development out of sheer habit, and hope to solve everything by simply stopping travel, transport and consumption. One can dream, but if we want to make the best of a world where ever more people rightly strive for ever higher standards of living, we’ll certainly need to be more solution-oriented.
So keep the lights on. Spend your evening well lit by modern LEDs, with a clear conscience, as a reminder that progress solves more problems than anti-growth activism ever has. Seek and spread knowledge about how we build a better tomorrow – and reject those who romanticise pre-industrial darkness.