Your candle is killing the planet!

This letter, which appeared in the Toronto Star on Thursday last, is worth quoting in full:

During Earth Hour we spent much of the evening chatting on Twitter. We were shocked by how many pictures we saw of people gathered around candles.

Earth Hour can be such a teachable moment for all of us, especially the young. They can learn that global warming is caused by extra carbon dioxide in the air. They can learn that CO2 release is really the enemy of all creatures who share this planet and anything we can do to reduce this rate of release is a good thing.

But on this Earth Hour, we lit candles, which are CO2 emitters, and we kept our furnaces online, which are a major carbon dioxide source.

What happened to the teachable moment? It’s gone. Better to bring out the batteries and flashlights and to explain why CO2-emitting candles and furnaces are not appropriate for Earth Hour.

By using that short lesson we strengthen the association in children’s minds between the problem of CO2 release and global warming.

That's right. It's not enough that we turn the clock back to the start of the industrial revolution in order to save the planet.  According to this gent, we have to go much further, even forgoing the candlelight that our ancestors, or at least the better-off among them, used in much earlier times.

I wonder how the author of this letter imagines that his "batteries and flashlights" got powered up. I wonder where he bought the clockwork computer that I am assuming he must have used to access Twitter during Earth Hour.  I wonder if he's aware that batteries, including the rechargeables that he presumably favours, are full of toxic chemicals.

But leave all that aside.  The really important point that he's missing is that doing something about climate change is much easier for us than it was for our great-great-great-great grandparents, because we're so much wealthier.  That's why the pea-souper fogs I can vaguely recall from when I was growing up in London haven't been seen for decades. It's why pollution levels in major North American and European cities have been brought under control. It's why, according to some estimates, global carbon dioxide emissions seem to have plateaued in the last couple of years. And it's why the big challenge in the immediate future is to stop the rise in CO2 omissions in massively populated countries like China and India, which aspire to reach the developed world's standard of living.

Most well-informed experts assure us that we can make the transition to a low carbon economy without sacrificing our overall standard of living.  That's good, because if we're all supposed to adopt the hair shirt that the Star's correspondent seems to advocate, people will start falling by the wayside very quickly -- starting with me.