Environmental Leader

Lomborg’s “Cool It” Read up do-gooders.

…the “lights out” campaign should also mean no air conditioning, telephones, Internet, movies, hot food, warm coffee, or cold drinks – not to mention the loss of security when street lights and traffic signals don’t work. Perhaps recruiting support would have been much harder had the Danes also had to turn off their heat.

Ironically, the lights-out campaign also implies much greater energy inefficiency and dramatically higher levels of air pollution. When asked to extinguish electric lights, most people around the world would turn to candlelight instead. Candles are cozy and seem oh-so-natural. Yet, when measured by the light they generate, candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights.

Moreover, candles create massive amounts of highly damaging indoor particulate air pollution, which in the United States is estimated to kill more than a 100,000 people each year. Candles can easily create indoor air pollution that is 10-100 times the level of outdoor air pollution caused by cars, industry, and electricity production. Measured against the relative decrease in air pollution from the reduced fossil fuel energy production, candles increase health-damaging air pollution 1,000-10,000-fold.

Unfortunately, the lights-out campaign exemplifies the state of much of our environmental debate. We are spoon fed stories that fit preconceived frameworks.

For example, the recent breakup of a massive glacier in the Antarctic supposedly

lightson | February 19th, 2009