That turning off the lights for an hour has become such an acceptable (and, let’s face it, painless) way of protesting says much about the top down, elitist green movement’s world view, which sees deprivation and poverty as lifestyle choices, and thinks that people in the developing world should be spared the excesses of our comfortable western lifestyles.
That the Romanian government has decided to do its bit by turning off the lights at Casa Poporului should be particularly despicable to anyone with a memory that stretches back beyond 1989.
In those days, electricity certainly couldn’t be taken for granted in Romania. Read this previous post on the subject to find out more. That today it is so cheap (relatively) – and can be wasted as we see fit – is something to celebrate.
Those people who think switching off the lights is such a good idea would do well to give away all their worldly possessions and head off to somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa where there simply is no electricity to switch off. Or, indeed, some villages in rural Romania.
Humanity’s priority now should be making sure that everyone in the world has access to cheap electricity, so that we can turn more lights on, not off.
Romania, keep the lights on!
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you might like this campaign:
Human Achievement Hour – Turn your lights on 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday 27 March
more here http://www.conservative.org.au/human-achievement-hour.html
Outstanding!
i dot not agree that caring for the planet makes you a communist. why shuld not Romania be taking part in this initiatives/ We have to stop the amounts of resourses we use because we are too many people on the earth.
‘we are too many people on the earth.’
So we need to get rid of some, is that what you mean? Are you volunteering to go first?
I’d go first but only it I took a few others with me so the ones who remain can live in a better world. Boc and Basescu among them.
The girl is right, we can’t kill a few but we can control births, sterilize criminals and gypsies, etc…
God told us to reproduce but he didn’t tell us to to reproduce like rabbits…
The biggest problem is that the poorer they are – the more they reproduce; which means that they deserve to be poor because they’re don’t act responsible.
Who are we to feed them?! We must act responsible towards the resources that we have and save them and keep them for ourselves.
I would put taxes instead of allowances for having more than 2 children.
How come Europe’s population is ageing when they live that good while Africa’s population keeps growing when they live in holes and bushes?! Those ones consume resources and give nothing back. I only heard of humanitarian missions in Somalia, Eritreea, Central African Republic, Botswana and shit, I never heard of Armani and Versace made in Botswana, why should we care after them?!
well, I’ll skip the eugenic bullshit and point only the fact that Africa’s human density is less then half of Europe’s. Also I would point that Africa’s resources have fueled pretty much all the might of Europe’s and US’s civilizations. And I’ll add that the biggest problem of contemporary civilizations(Romania included) is the population aging/decrease and not overpopulation. But otherwise your right.
well, it seems Romania is not really the biggest consumer of electricity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption in fact, if you consider the per capita consumption (307 W) Romania is towards the middle to lower half… so maybe electricity is not exactly what we as Romanians should worry about when thinking at the Earth(pollution, mining, the ubiquitous plastic garbage etc. are an other story but dealing with them is harder and less spectacular) . About “too many people on the earth”… I don’t know on what numbers are you basing that statement (how many are too many?) but it seems that the ants are outweighing the human population (http://www.thaibugs.com/Articles/ant%20facts.htm) and they have also a big impact on earth’s ecosystem… so maybe we should first kill the ants and then only switch to humans.
“Too many” means there’s not enough food for everyone or the food available is beginning to be priced ridiculously.
Or the oil available is beginning to be priced ridiculously if the first statement wasn’t very convincing…
well, in this case we shouldn’t have to take any measures because the population will be naturally controlled by: the food available and/or oil available. As the population actually increases globally (even if slower then at the beginning of 20th century) it means we didn’t reached any limits. The history of human civilization and the fear of “the end of human civilization” go hand in hand, in our times we only replaced the argument of the “wrath of god” with “lack of resources”. The problem with the “lack of resources” argument is that you can’t actually know what will be “the resource” of tomorrow, for example the wealth of a nation 300 years ago was defined by the amount of salt that it had… I assume there where wise men in that time that could have proven that in 300 years the human race will disappear because there was not enough salt in the world to sustain us all… I assume they would have been wrong.
Yes, Romania is adopting all the “civilized” fads missing the fact the it should first adopt civilization. The same misguided thinking is applied when discussing the “civilized” way of solving the stray dogs problem, and others… But hey, we have always chosen the “original” way instead of the “proven” way.
Tudor,
Romania is all messed up because Ceausescu messed it up. Now it is 2010 and Romania finds itself needing to adopt current thinking and methods in all aspects of society even though it lost 40 years during Communism while the Western world progressed. Romania has continued to lose time in the last 20 years as well due to the second tier former Communists and Securitate who run Romania. The reason Bucharest is so chaotic and just plain bizarre at times is because the city is having to play catch-up suddenly. I think at this point the way for Romania to adopt “civilization” is by adopting the “civilized” fads as you call them. Romania had its chance like any other country to progress and become civilized but instead a shoemaker ran the country for 24 years. Romania lost its chance to act like other countries and pollute. It is the 21st century and Romania needs to re-enter the World as a decent, respectable EU country.
At what point does it stop all being Ceausescu’s fault? Is he responsible for all that happened before and since or are we really saying that those 24 years are what have inextricably defined a nation and a city? I might be wrong but I don’t buy it.
Romanians want to believe that Ceausescu ruined everything because it absolves them from responsibility and allows them to believe in a present/future that could have been. Some foreigners just seem to find it an easy short cut to “understanding” Romania.
If you read descriptions of Romanian society before the commies came along, it really doesn’t sound very different to the society you see today. At least it doesn’t sound different to me.
Geronimo,
Well, what I do know is that Ceausescu leveled almost half the historic center, disrupting traffic patterns and making the extension of the metro to Drumul Tabere, for instance, impossible since it the line would go through underground escape routes from the Palace. Sure, I have read accounts like Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy and it was amazing how Bucharest seems to be the same today, but Ceausescu did due a number on the psyche of people here. In city I have ever been due people have such self-consciousness as here. I know this because people here seem to have eyes in the back of their heads. If just the historic center was still intact, think how much better the city would be. It just might actually be a tourist destination, “The Paris of the East.” Then imagine that Romanians never had to emerge from such economic oppression as Ceasusescu wrought on them and Bucharest wouldn’t be so chaotic. There would be no fitze crowd, only wealthy people with nice cars who knew how to handle themselves.
Of course, it was just like you can see it today.
The Communists only tried to put their order in a mess that already existed, unfortunately they didn’t have time. If they had another 30 years maybe finally there would have been some order in this country, any order.
The Romanian society was shaped since the times of the Romans, continued with the times of the Turks, then the Greeks, then the French and Austrians, then the Communists and now the Americans and somewhat the E.U.
In a place where such powerful influences was exercised over 2000 years it’s difficult to see anything else than the Tower of Babylon that Romania is today…
There are many theories of why Romania is where it is (messed up or not): some say is because Ceausescu, some say is because the Fanariots other blame the geopolitical and historical circumstances. Whatever the reason, we have to move on. I agree with you that Romania has to play catch-up with its European counterparts, but we have to do it in areas that matter: we have to increase the electric grid (not all houses have electricity in Romania); we have to increase the public lighting (a lot of villages and city streets are in dark); we have to increase the water consumption/network (a lot of villages don’t have current water). We don’t have to decrease the electric consumption, we don’t have to decrease the water consumption, we don’t have to get into all this green initiatives and downshifting bullshit because we are not there, we don’t consume what a civilized country consumes. Adopting all these great bourgeois ideas are in fact hampering our catching up, not helping it. First let us be “civilized” and then worry about civilizations downsides.
@tudor: This is exactly the problem greens do not appear to understand. If we implemented the kind of policies they want then development would grind to a halt. They bang on and on about sustainable development, which is in fact little more than stagnation, and making poverty bearable. It is not real development and will not make poverty history. Throughout history human development has tended to be s l o w before bursting to life and making giant, unsustainable leaps. Look at the industrial revolution: it was certainly not sustainable, but it dragged more people off the land and out of poverty than anything before.
It’s a good point Tudor makes by the way. I like Romania the way it is – we all (Romanians and foreigners alike) seem to spend a lot of time trying to find someone to blame for Romania being a mess. Perhaps we should accept it the way it is and work to improve the things we think we can improve
@Craig:
If we don’t care about the environment, our environment as it was left by God and Ceausescu, soon we’re gonna import air from the West.
In 20 years the E.U. consumed all our forrests and polluted all our waters, all our oil went in their cars and this didn’t happen in the times of Ceausescu, this happened in the times of the E.U.
We have to evolve independently and with personality and we have to protect ourselves first.
We don’t have enough natural resources tu support our development to the level of the E.U. and still keep some for ourselves. We need to protect whatever natural resources we have left and invest in everything else that we can spare.
For example we can spare a few workers, we should invest in education so that we can export these workers allover the world.
Also we can spare a few **ssy, maybe we should legalize prostitution so that the girls are exported to the West already qualified.
Everyone exports what they can: the Swedish export technology, the Italians export clothes, we export **ssy.