Culture Briefs

Earth Hour

“The average American produces about 20 tons of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) every year. That might sound like a lot — and Americans do have among the biggest carbon footprints in the world — but the entire world emits around 27 billion tons of CO2 each year, through transportation, electricity use, deforestation. Look at those numbers for a moment and you’ll realize there’s very little that any of us can do on an individual level to stop climate change. …

“It’s numbers like those that can make Earth Hour so easy to criticize. Starting at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, in Christchurch, New Zealand, citizens from around the world turned off their lights for an hour, to draw attention to the connection between energy use and climate change. From New Zealand, the event moved westward with the sun to Australia, Manila, Dubai, Dublin, New York, Chicago and finally San Francisco, where both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge went dark for an hour… .

“Watching the lights wink off in major metropolitan areas no doubt looked impressive, but it’s worth asking: What was the point? … So, if it won’t cut carbon emissions, why bother then with Earth Hour, or Earth Day or Earth Live, last year’s daylong concert for the environment?

“Because climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is symbolism. Just because an act is symbolic doesn’t mean it’s empty. The only way to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to take the pressure off global warming, is an international regime that puts a cap and a price on climate pollution. And the only way that will happen is if politicians around the world become convinced that climate change is an issue that matters to people, one that will make them change the way they live, buy — and vote.”

— Bryan Walsh, writing on “Earth Hour ’08: Did it Matter?” for Time.com

Travel by the Left

“Fresh allegations that Iraqi intelligence funded the prewar propaganda trip to Saddam Hussein”s Iraq by U.S. Reps. Jim McDermott, David Bonior and Mike Thompson should not surprise anyone familiar with the history of the American Left. Ideological tourism, in which totalitarian powers engineer the junkets of influential leftists in exchange for positive publicity in the enemy nation, has seduced the likes of such radical heavyweights as Lincoln Steffens, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Reed and Tom Hayden.

“Jack Reed is the father of the political pilgrimage. He traveled to witness the Russian Revolution on the dime of an American heiress. He later departed Soviet Russia with ’Moscow Gold’ — a million rubles (mostly in diamonds, actually) — and tales of utopia beyond the Urals.

” ’I suddenly realized that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven,’ Reed, witnessing a Bolshevik funeral, wrote in ’Ten Days That Shook the World.’ ’On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die.’ Although the author was a paid agent of Soviet Russia”s Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda, in 1999 a panel convened by New York University named the book one of the 20th century”s 10 best works of journalism.”

— Daniel J. Flynn, writing on “Saddam”s Useful Idiots,” March 31 for National Review Online (www.nationalreview. com)

Remembering MLK

“Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago this week in Memphis — on April 4, 1968, to be exact. America has never stopped grieving.

“Journalists just love to mark major societal and historical events by passages of time, labeling them as milestones and anniversaries. So four decades after King’s death, the U.S. media will undoubtedly commemorate his enduring legacy. …

“This time, however, I hope the media can resist the temptation to call King’s shooting an ’anniversary.’ The description simply seems inappropriate, if not insulting and even trite. Anniversaries should be recognized as joyous events that are worthy of celebration. …

“We should honor King by talking about his accomplishments, not by trivializing him with maudlin prose or by making him seem like some sort of deity.”

— Jon Friedman, writing on “How King should be remembered by the media,” yesterday at Marketwatch.com