Is It Wrong to Bring a Child Into This World?

Introduction

Throughout the world, the birthrate is falling. I’m not overmuch concerned about this, actually; we humans have had a good run, have obviously taken more than our share of our planet’s bounty and so on, and as a species I doubt we’ll be missed. But I am at the time of life when my friends have kids of child-rearing age, and here and there I’ll hear one of these friends say, whether quoting their kids or expressing their own sentiment or both, “It just seems wrong to bring a child into this world.” This gets my hackles up; in this post I explore why.

Just to make sure this sentiment is a thing, vs. me just happening to know an outsized number of nutjobs, I did a little research. Sure enough, a large (N=11,945) Pew survey conducted in 2023, when the US fertility rate reached a historic low, catalogs a variety of reason people aren’t procreating, and among these are two flavors of “it seems wrong,” including “concerns about the state of the world, other than the environment” (cited by 38% of respondents aged 18-49) and “concerns about the environment, including climate change” (26%). A third position, which didn’t figure in the Pew survey but I kept stumbling upon in my  research, is the idea that it’s ethically wrong to bring about a human life, period, since we can expect that human to undergo a lot of suffering during his or her lifetime. (This is similar to the “concerns about the state of the world,” except that it doesn’t account for the specific circumstances that person would face: this perspective is that it’s always wrong.)

I’m going to address these in order of how much they bother me.

But first, some demographic grounding…

You might wonder why I would challenge any resistance to the idea of procreation, given how overpopulation has for decades been cited as one of the greatest problems facing the world. I first encountered this notion in junior high when “ZPG,” zero population growth, was treated like the most noble of human endeavors. At that time, the bestselling book The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich, was still being talked about, years after its publication. In fact, Ehrlich’s influence continued such that his ideas showed up again in my college Environmental Studies course. But oddly enough, Ehrlich’s predictions have not been materially borne out.

I still encounter people who believe overpopulation is a major global problem. They haven’t gotten the memo: the human population will peak during this century and then decline. This isn’t some hunch or non-validated claim your blogger is spouting; it’s widely accepted by demographers, and explained in this report by the United Nations. (The timing of this downturn is somewhat debated; the direction is not. For example, the UN predicts a peak population of 10.3 billion in the 2080s, whereas University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, publishing in The Lancet, projects a peak of 9.7 billion as early as 2064.)

Why is this? It’s due to the dramatic drop in fertility rates globally. The term “fertility” in this context doesn’t just mean our capability of reproducing (e.g., sperm count, other biological factors). It’s generally short for “total fertility rate” (TFR) and indicates the number of children a couple ends up having, based on all factors including their willingness to even try to conceive. The current TFR for the U.S. is 1.60 (i.e., on average each couple has 1.6 children). It’s widely considered that to maintain a country’s population requires a TFR of 2.1. (This is the accepted threshold because slightly more boys than girls are born, and not all children survive to reproductive age.) Worldwide, the TFR currently stands at 2.25, and it’s dropping fast, and has been for decades, since 1965—the same year the birth control pill came out, and the US Supreme Court struck down state laws banning contraception for married people. Check out this graph, from the excellent book Factfulness – Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling et al:

So how come the world population isn’t declining yet, despite the low TFR? First of all, while one in four people already live in a country whose population has peaked, this sub-replacement-level TFR probably hasn’t been reached yet globally. (I say “probably” because there’s disagreement on this; some demographers believe it has.) The UN predicts the worldwide TFR won’t go below 2.1 until 2036. Even when it does, the population won’t decline right away, due to a concept that demographers call momentum. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, describes it thus, in an interview you can read here:

Momentum means the population will keep growing for 15 to 30 years after you fall below the replacement rate. Let me give a simple example. Imagine you have a spouse and only one kid. You are below replacement rate, but you are two. You have two parents, your spouse has two parents. You are not replacing yourselves, but your parents have not died yet. The fact that you have one kid still increases the population. The problem is when your parents die, [you] have not replaced them.

In case you’re curious, the population of the US has been projected by our Census Bureau to peak around 2080, based on experts’ best guess at the immigration rate. Their low-immigration model forecasts a peak in 2043, and without any immigration, we’d have peaked already, in 2024. 

So what happened to Ehrlich’s predictions of doom? Interestingly enough, his ideas weren’t actually accepted among serious demographers even when The Population Bomb was published. He kind of duped us! In fact, his book came out three years after the average number of babies per woman had already peaked and begun its long decline. He was diagnosing a crisis at the precise moment the underlying trend was already moving us in the opposite direction.

All of this is to say, declining to procreate based on the specter of overpopulation is an outdated notion that would be all too easy to dismiss. But the population backdrop is useful to bear in mind as we examine the three rationale I mentioned for believing it’s wrong to bring a child into this world.

The environmental perspective

When people cite the burden of humanity on the planet as a reason not to have kids, I have to concede they have a point. Certainly we humans have taken more than our share of resources and caused massive damage to the planet, including the loss of countless species. It’s easy to see how not procreating would help, but I will challenge this position anyway. First, it’s easy enough for us to deride the environmental consequences of humankind, but aren’t we also enjoying our lives and the gifts that fossil fuels bestow? How convenient that we can take the high road regarding breeding, since we didn’t choose to be here. I notice very few are volunteering to leave.

The idea of not procreating does seem like the most effective way to lower carbon emissions. Sure, I can (and usually do) bike instead of drive, but of course I still have a carbon footprint. (In fact, most of my rides are for recreation, not transportation; I eat more because I ride hard; and I shower and launder my bike clothing after every ride.) The only way to shrink my carbon footprint to zero would be, of course, to off myself, but I’m not willing to do that. Making a pledge not to produce offspring that carry forward our planet-ruining ways is obviously much easier (at least for people who, unlike me, aren’t parents yet). My research produced a number of celebrities expounding this merits of this noble sacrifice. Perhaps the most outspoken was Miley Cyrus who told Elle magazine, “We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child.” She vows not to procreate “until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water.”

I think her sentiment is a good example of how this is more of a values-oriented idea than a true strategy, unless you’re willing to go all the way. There are certainly people who are, such as members of The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) (pronounced “vehement”) whose motto is “May we live long and die out.” VHEMT’s founder, Les Knight, told the New York Times, “We [humans] came to be and then ran amok. And because we’re smart enough, we should know enough to end it.” David Benatar, a prominent moral philosopher at the University of Cape Town, speaking about the extinction of the human race, declares, “It would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later.” I am guessing that most people who trot out the environmental rationale for non-child-rearing aren’t this extreme.

I’m struck that the endgame of voluntary human extinction is rather similar to what happens if we do nothing about climate change: either way, we humans end up extinct. The difference is how much collateral damage we cause along the way. But the idea that we as individuals should sacrifice having kids in the service of environmental welfare doesn’t, for me, entirely hold up because a) if this perspective gained popularity, eventually the only people procreating would be climate change deniers, who don’t tend to devote themselves to clean energy and other pro-environment efforts, and b) based on wider trends, the fertility rate is dropping so fast already that our human impact on the planet is going to decline radically in the coming decades anyway. To showcase how radically, let’s look at some numbers, from this essay by Derek Thompson, a longtime writer for The Atlantic, in which he interviews Fernández-Villaverde, the economist at Penn I quoted earlier. Fernández-Villaverde explains:

Let’s suppose Thailand keeps its current fertility rate of 0.8 for 200 years. Thailand right now has 63 million people. At the end of 200 years, it will be around two million people [italics mine]. How do you wind down a society of 63 million people into two million? … It means you need to close 98% of the hospitals of the country. It means you need to close 98% of the schools of the country.

Just think of the diminishment of infrastructure worldwide. Fewer buildings, fewer cars, fewer drivers, fewer everything. We’re already seeing this in the US. My own kids’ schools in Albany, California used to strictly police their locals-only admission policy, but now accepts students from neighboring communities when space allows, due to declining enrollment. Similarly, Fernández-Villaverde mentions how his school district in Philadelphia is “closing a lot of primary schools because there are no kids.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a climate change denier or apologist, but it looks like a number of factors are lining up to give a bit of relief here. The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based intergovernmental energy agency of the world’s major developed economies, asserts in its World Energy Outlook 2024 report that CO2 emissions in advanced economies fell by 1.1% to 10.9 billion tons in 2024—a level last seen 50 years ago, even though the cumulative GDP of these countries is now three times as large. Granted, China’s per-capita emissions are rising sharply as its economy grows, but the IEA report forecasts that it too will decline in the second half of the century—and meanwhile, China’s fertility rate is just 1.0, so their population will crash almost as dramatically as Thailand’s.

To reiterate, fertility rates are dropping very quickly, worldwide, which will have a dramatic effect on the global population. This is a giant boulder gaining speed. To abstain from having kids—just to give that boulder a little extra push—strikes me more as a nice gesture than a moral imperative. And if we really care about climate change, might we not consider that some of our offspring may help try do something to solve the problem? Giving them the opportunity seems like a small risk, when our prospective kids’ effect on the rapidly declining world population looks like a rounding error.

The ethical perspective

Aside from the pragmatic idea of defending the planet from human onslaught, there is a philosophical, ethical movement called antinatalism that objects to procreation in principle. In a nutshell, it holds that just being alive entails suffering, and thus by bringing a person into the world, we are causing that person to suffer without their consent. It’s as though antinatalists heard teenagers complaining, “I didn’t ask to be born” and took it too much to heart. But actually, this idea isn’t new. Around 400 BC, Sophocles wrote, “Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came.” (I confess it’s hard for me to take this seriously; I’m envisioning a horrified human scrambling frantically to try to crawl back into his mother’s womb.)

In 1851, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

One should try to imagine that the act of procreation were neither a need, nor accompanied by sexual pleasure, but instead a matter of pure, rational reflection, could the human race even continue to exist? Would not everyone, on the contrary, have so much compassion for the coming generation that he would rather spare it the burden of existence, or at least refuse to take it upon himself to cold-bloodedly impose it on them?

I guess Schopenhauer would be surprised not only that humans do now have the choice, but that so far a majority of us have continued to procreate. Maybe we’re all enjoying our lives more than he did.

Among modern thinkers there doesn’t seem to be a deep bench of full-time philosophers espousing antinatalism; perhaps their most prominent figure is Benatar, the guy I quoted earlier saying “the sooner we go extinct the better.” He wrote a book twenty years ago called Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, which might be the closest the modern movement has to a bible. The centerpiece of his antinatalism is known as “Benatar’s Asymmetry,” which (as described by Wikipedia) goes like this:

1. The presence  of pain is bad.

 2. The presence of pleasure is good. However:

3. The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone.

4. The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there exists someone for whom this absence is a deprivation.

Thus, bringing a person into existence generates both good and bad experiences, such as pain and pleasure, whereas not coming into existence entails neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, while the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.

I have two fundamental problems with this logic. First, it assumes that pleasure and pain are like measurable building blocks of experience. They are absolutely not. Some people get more pleasure in life than others; some get more pain. But who could possibly calculate, on the whole, whether any particular person minds the disparity of his or her circumstance so much as to regret being alive? As operands in Benatar’s handy little grid, “pleasure” and “pain” work fine; in real life, they’re so messy as to be useless in any kind of experiential calculus.

My second issue with this Benatar’s Asymmetry is that it presupposes that all pain and suffering are in fact a net negative, whereas overcoming suffering can produce great satisfaction. Consider Eminem’s character in 8 Mile: most of the movie showcases his struggle, disappointment, and humiliation, until (don’t worry, no real spoilers here) it all comes right in the end. (If you haven’t seen that movie, go watch it right now and come back.) The triumph in the end is glorious. And now let’s consider Eminem’s actual life: he had a thoroughly miserable childhood, with a drug-addicted mother who suffered Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, meaning she literally poisoned her child because she derived pleasure from the ministrations of medical staff. Imagine his satisfaction at not only surviving that, but going on to achieve worldwide stardom and excellence as a musical artist. Overcoming odds can be intensely gratifying. Listen to the triumph in Eminem’s voice in “Halie’s Song,” about the joy he gets from being a father: “ ‘Cause my baby knows that her daddy’s a soldier/ Nothin’ can take her from me.”

Perhaps the opportunity to gain strength and satisfaction from suffering can start to explain why people actually choose to endure pain—think of athletes. I myself have inflicted suffering on myself countless times (click here, or here, or here), just for the thrill of it. Naturally, there’s a difference between the suffering we willingly undertake and that which is thrust upon us, but I have experience there too, like when I broke my femur in a bike crash. Obviously if I could have chosen not to endure that, I’d gladly have passed—and yet, it did happen, and I did continue with the sport. It never occurred to me to quit. Why? Because on balance the pain is worth the pleasure. I’d just as soon decide where I fall on that pleasure/pain axis, vs. my parents having concluded on my behalf, ahead of time, that my life just wouldn’t be worth the suffering.

Another central argument Benatar makes is what he calls the “misanthropic argument,” which Wikipedia describes thus:

According to this argument, humans are a deeply flawed and destructive species that is responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence.

This one is just empirically false: I can easily name a species that causes the deaths of billions of animals: housecats. The peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications estimates that “domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.” Are we really going to call for the voluntary extinction of the domestic cat? Look, Benatar: the world is a harsh place. Get over it.

Finally, a widespread tenet of the antinatal movement, as documented here and here, is that by having a child, we are exposing that person to pain and suffering without his or her consent. The popular antinatalist YouTuber Lawrence Anton explains, “So, you’re creating someone and they’re going to go through all this suffering, whatever it is in their life, and you’re not even able to ask them if they want to take those odds.” Well, what would that consent even look like? Don’t teenagers breezily blow past every privacy warning and end user agreement they ever see on social media, because they don’t have the fully formed neocortex required for the consideration of consequences? How much reasoning power does a zygote have?

Kidding aside, do these antinatalists really believe that we humans who have gotten the chance to exist are in a position to provide consent for our own future suffering? What if God came to me in a vision and said, “Dana, as a fallen Unitarian you are scheduled to have crippling back pain in your 70s. Would you prefer to be struck by lightning at 69?” I wouldn’t be able to decide. And what about the elder population a generation or two from now, whose safety net would be demolished if antinatalists got their way and there was no younger generation to pay into Social Security? Are we planning to get their consent? How come suffering is only to be avoided when it’s hypothetical instead of assured?

To be continued…

I advised earlier that I would consider each of these three “is it wrong” rationale in order of how much they vex me. As this post has gone on long enough, I shall save the “best” for last. Tune in next week when I’ll tackle the reason that 38% of the adults between 18 to 49 gave, in the Pew survey, for not having children: “Concerns about the state of the world.” I’ll also go into the number one reason those surveyed gave for not having kids, and why I’m actually fine with it.

UPDATE: Part II is now posted here.

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Why Train Travel Is Better

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and subtle insinuations of mild sensuality.

Introduction

 Six years ago I blogged (here, here, and here) about my family’s trip on Amtrak from the Bay Area to Chicago.  Well, we’re at it again.  I’m typing away from the observation car as the train makes its way through the mountains east of Grand Junction, Colorado.  Our destination this time is Denver.

(As far as you know I posted this after the fact and/or we’re flying straight home from there so by the time you read this it will be too late to burglarize our home.  Or maybe not … maybe this is the beginning of a long vacation, in which case you’re welcome to try to steal our sentimentally valuable but commercially useless family heirlooms, though you’ll have to deal with our psychotic gun-nut house-sitter and his meth-fueled pit bull, who never knew his father.)

Having tackled the overall train travel experience in my previous posts, today I’m going to give you the top 10 reasons why train travel is the best way to go. 

Reason #1:  Train travel is novel

Train travel is novel.  Flying has become as routine as taking a bus, more so actually, as has driving, and both activities get old pretty quickly (unless you’re driving on a cool highway like US 50).  And on the train if you get tired of your coach seat or sleeper car berth, you can mosey on up to the observation deck, or down to the lounge, and at mealtime you get to sit in the dining car (and actually, the Amtrak food is pretty darn good).  At bedtime if you’re in a sleeper you fold down one bed from above and turn the seats into another bed, which is really fun for kids (I think this gave my younger daughter goose bumps the first time).

The train stops from time to time, in places more rustic and less bland than the convenience stores along an interstate.  You can step off the train for a little fresh air.

Reason #2:  Flashers

Also, if you take the California Zephyr route you’ll cruise along the Truckee and Colorado rivers, where there are lots of rafters, and your chances of being mooned or flashed are very high.  It’s a long-standing tradition, apparently, for young men to moon the train, or young women to pull up their shirts or bikini tops for the benefit of Amtrak sightseers.  When my brother took his kids on this train back in ’05 they were flashed by rafters, as was my wife in ’06 (while my head was, alas, turned the wrong way).  And while I was sitting here peering into my laptop just now, a rafter flashed the passengers to my right.  I’m so bummed to have missed that.  Serves me right for writing this instead of just gazing out the window and watching life go by.  I hope you’re happy.

Reason #3:  Better for the planet

Wikipedia reckons that “a train seems to be on average 20 times more efficient than automobile for transportation of passengers, if we consider energy spent per passenger-km.”  They base this on an assumption of the car getting 39 mpg, which is far better than most cars get, especially with a bunch of luggage and/or bikes fastened to the roof rack.  In contrast, Wikipedia estimates that a passenger train gets 468 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel.

I’m not sure how Wikipedia gets their “20 times more efficient” figure because they don’t show their work.  My Volvo gets about 28 mpg on the highway, so with 4 passengers that’s 28*4 = 112 passenger-miles per gallon, which—compared to the train’s 468 passenger-miles/gallon—makes the train look only 4.2 times as efficient as a fully-loaded automobile.  I’m not going to ponder this disparity at length, because I’m more interested in comparing a train to a plane.

Wikipedia estimates that an Airbus 380 (the dumpy plane most of us tend to fly) gets 78 passenger-miles per gallon.  That means the train is 6 times more efficient (per passenger) than the plane. On top of that, the plane is polluting up in the atmosphere where the emissions do the most damage.  The so-called “climatic forcing” effect of jet aircraft means that although “per passenger a typical economy-class New York to Los Angeles round trip produces about 715 kg (1,574 lb) of CO2,” this is “equivalent to 1,917 kg (4,230 lb) of CO2.”  That is, the fact of the aircraft emissions being high in the atmosphere increases the environmental damage by a factor of 2.7.  So the train is actually about 16 times less bad for the environment than a plane.  In other words, for the environmental cost of one family vacation involving air travel, we could take 16 train trips of equal length.

If these numbers start to make your head swim or your eyes glaze over, here’s a more interesting way to express the efficiency of trains:  in 2007 a man dragged a 7-coach train weighing almost 300 tons along its track for more than 9 feet, using his teeth.  This is possible because the steel-on-steel interface between the train wheels and the track incurs so little friction.  (You think that guy could lift even a small single-engine aircraft off the ground with his teeth?)

A final environmental consideration:  the benefit of your choice doesn’t end with your train trip.  Amtrak pays freight train companies for the use of their tracks, so by supporting Amtrak you’re also supporting the railroad freight industry, which is far greener than long haul trucking.

Reason #4:  Can be cheaper

If you can tolerate coach class—where the seats are way bigger than an airplane’s, by the way, with far more legroom—Amtrak can be very inexpensive.  I’m sharing a table in this observation car with an lady who is traveling from Winnemucca, NV to some town just outside Chicago for under $280, round-trip.  The gal across the aisle is going from the Bay Area to Denver and the total tab, one-way, is $222 … which covers herself and her two kids.  (Full disclosure:  this was her original cost, but a couple days before her trip, Amtrak ran a special on the sleeper car so she upgraded for “not much money.”)

The sleeper car is generally a lot more expensive than coach, but I sprung for the sleeper car because this is our big vacation for the year.  It was worth paying extra just to be able to tell my kids, “We’re livin’ large as possible, posse unstoppable, style topical, vividly optical.”  I can’t make this boast with air travel because first class there is way too much money to even consider, and the seats are still smaller than even the coach seats on Amtrak.  (Each seat in the sleeper cabin is wide enough for two.)

Reason #5:  None of the airline bullshit!

I hate flying.  Going through the security check, and having to take off my shoes (even though the one guy who tried to smuggle explosives in his shoe got caught), and having to drink up or forfeit my water, and let some guy pat me down so closely I expect him to ask for my phone number afterward, and then having to take my bag over to some table where somebody runs a little cloth swab all over it to check for explosives—as if!—and then, once I’m finally on the plane, being deprived of legroom, food, even peanuts, and invariably being seated right above the wing with the jet engine shrieking in my ear, and having the baggage policy get ever stingier practically every time I fly, and being asked to pay—get this—$150 each way to bring my 17-pound bicycle on the plane … it’s all just such bullshit I can’t even describe it without the “-shit” part.  I tried to use “BS” but it just wasn’t enough.

On Amtrak, there is no security check.  None.  I mean, what are you going to do, hijack the train and make them take you to the Flagstaff, AZ station instead of Denver?  The Amtrak process is so simple:  you make your reservation, print out your single sheet of paper which serves as the boarding pass for your whole family, show up at the station 45 minutes in advance (no check-in required), and bring practically as many bags as you want, for free, and take them right to the train where you’ll have access to them the whole trip and never have to wait for them to come off the carousel.

And you know what?  If you’re not that organized, and you get a late start riding bikes to the station with your teenage daughter, and if Google Maps totally screws you by leading you not to the station but to a barren place across the tracks and more importantly across a giant fence from the station, so you have to spend an extra ten minutes racing around on surface streets, you can literally roll up with your bike less than 15 minutes before the train leaves.  At least, my daughter and I did, and incurred only a very mild, brief tongue-lashing at the ticket counter, where I paid $10 each to take our bikes on the train.  And the bikes, un-boxed (because Amtrak had run out of boxes), didn’t have to go through some system of conveyor belts like at an airport, which present some danger to the bikes, which danger the airlines—being dicks about this, like everything—accept no liability for.  I put the bikes on a luggage cart, and the conductor said they’d just be leaned on a wall and lashed down.  Simple.

Reason #6:  Less stressful than driving

Driving is a leading cause of accidental death.  Even if you’re the best driver ever, you’re sharing the road with drunks, and irresponsible young men who think driving fast is a game, and drivers who just plain suck.  And you have no control over the weather, which can turn your road trip into a nightmare.

With a train, you’re responsible for  getting yourself to the station and that’s about it.  Then you can read, sleep, look out the window, play a board game, blog, or take advantage of the seventh reason why trains are better.

Reason #7:  Friendly fellow passengers

It is technically possible to have a good conversation on an airplane with a fellow passenger, but highly unlikely.  First of all, your only opportunity is with the person in the next seat, vs. wandering around a train with the opportunity to chat up anybody who seems friendly.  Second, most air travelers are too angry, too tense, and/or (if they’re on business) too preoccupied to want to chat.  In my experience, everybody in the Amtrak observation car is there to soak up the view and relax.  I’ve conversed with several friendly passengers today.

Conversely, if you don’t feel like chatting, you don’t have to be rude to the person in the (assigned airline) seat next to you who keeps asking what you’re reading instead of letting you read.  On a train, you can just return to your seat, or into your sleeper car where you can close the curtain and/or door.

Now, if you’re sharing an automobile with your favorite people, of course you can chat with them, but only to a point.  If you’re the one driving, you shouldn’t get too caught up in the conversation or you’ll become that “distracted driver” that is such a menace to society.  (Once, at the end of a 6-hour drive, I missed the exit to my mom’s town because I was so caught up in reciting the poem “Kill My Landlord.”)  If you’re not driving, you need to take care to not distract the driver too much.  And you can’t have a good conversation with your kids because they’re too busy fighting in the backseat, and dispensing toilet paper out the window to make comets, and fussing, and squirming, and asking, “Are we there yet?”  On the train you can split them up, banish them to their sleeping room, or tell them to go pester the conductor about the ETA.

Reason #8:  Better scenery

The view from the tiny plastic airplane window is okay during takeoff and landing, but once you’re at cruising altitude you’re usually too far up to see much.  Occasionally the pilot will get on the PA and say, “Those of you on the right side of the aircraft can see the Grand Canyon down there … looks a little like a cracked lip.”  Often there’s cloud cover below the plane so you can’t see anything at all.

The view from an automobile is better, but you still don’t see as much.  Train tracks sometimes go through places that don’t have roads.  I’ve been looking out at the Colorado River and the gorge it winds through, and it’s pretty impressive.  The tracks go through less developed areas so the landscape is often especially impressive.

Right now the train is threading its way between Routt National Forest and Arapaho National Forest, near the towns of Kremmling, Heeny, and Sheephorn.  Have you heard of these places?  Of course not, and that’s the point.  (“I used to live in Kremmling,” a friendly fellow passenger just piped up, having perhaps read that over my shoulder.  “One saloon and one cabin.”)

Even familiar scenery can be completely changed by the unique vantage point of the train.  I’ve seen the Carquinez Bridge hundreds of times, but never from below, as I did yesterday.

There are even volunteer docents on some stretches, who will give you history about an area (such as the gold country or the gorge we’re going through now).  They don’t just drone on either; they’re pretty funny.  “Look at that white thing way up on the bank there—that’s a Suburban,” one just said.  “That’s a teenager’s driving lesson.”

You also get to see cooler animals via the train.  On this trip my family has seen antelope; prairie dogs; some strange animal we’re calling a desert badger; a jackrabbit; mule deer; and even a T-Rex scarfing baby Ewoks like they were croutons.  (I made that last bit up to see if you’re still awake.)  Some animals seem curious about the train whereas no living creature has any interest in cars (except certain humans).

On top of all this, you’re not going that fast on the train, so you get a better look at everything.  (And you still get where you’re going sooner than a car because the train doesn’t stop for the night.)

Reason #9:  Don’t have to look at people

There comes a time during a conventional voyage when you get so bored, you may be unable to resist looking at other people.  How often have you been on a 6-hour flight and you get so stir-crazy you decide to head over to the lavatory, even though you know there’ll be a line, and you stand there looking out over all the other bored, irritated people, packed in like cattle, and you just hate them all?  Or you’re so bored during a drive that you start to look at every driver you pass, and in every single case they’re looking back at you, and you’re both thinking, “What are you lookin’ it?!” and it’s just kind of creepy?

I guess if the answer to those (albeit rhetorical) questions is “No,” then you’re a better person than I am, and you can have your boring interstate highways and jam-packed airplanes.  For me, boredom just isn’t a problem on a train, and there’s so much to look at, and everybody looks better to me because, like them, I’m so much more cheerful.

Reason #10:  No deep vein thrombosis or perforated eardrums

Okay, I’ll concede that deep vein thrombosis isn’t exactly an epidemic.  It’s the rare person who, due to being too cramped and still for too long, suffers a blood clot that moves through his/her system and causes a pulmonary embolism.  But it can happen.  What if you got one and died on a plane or in your car?  Wouldn’t that be a rotten way to go?  (“He died as he lived … stuck in coach” or “He didn’t die alone … his car veered over several lanes and took out a school bus.”)

Meanwhile, train travel is easier on your ears.  The pressure changes on a train are very gradual.  As you cross the Continental Divide, you might notice the foil on a single-serving coffee creamer start to bulge, but you won’t feel much in your ears.  This train is at over 7,000 feet elevation right now and I’ve barely felt a thing.  Airplanes are different.  Cabin pressure is at cruising altitude is equivalent to 5,000 feet of elevation, and can decrease to zero in a matter of minutes when you land.  Once, I had a minor cold resulting in a clogged Eustachian tube, so when the plane descended I suffered a perforated eardrum.  This was absolutely excruciating and turned my ear into a geyser of blood and pus for several days, and required several follow-up visits with a doctor.

Bonus Reason:  Hand-to-hand combat

If you try to give somebody a real beat-down in the aisle of a passenger jet, you’ll probably get arrested when you land.  And an automobile is just too confined a space for a good fistfight—your elbows keep hitting things.  The sleeping cabin of a train, however, is private and spacious.  I could hear my daughters going at it from across the aisle.  They don’t pack a good punch, those girls, so neither was injured, but I think they had a good, satisfying tussle.

This was confirmed when I interviewed my daughters for this post.  Among the reasons my older daughter gave for preferring train travel was “Can finally fight it out with your sister once and for all.”  She even admitted that she was fantasizing a bit about being James Bond, who never boarded a train without having one final battle with this or that nemesis.  (And for the record, upon reading over my shoulder just now, she has assured me that she was pulling her punches and actually could have done serious damage.  Maybe on the way home?)

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Roof Rack Fracas

Introduction

A friend of mine up in Bend told me about this trust fund guy he sees around who not only has the ultimate bike rack for his (cool 4WD) car, with attachments for every kind of recreational toy (bike, kayak, skis), but carries all the equipment around full time, like a rolling trophy case for his outdoorsy lifestyle.  The dude is clearly not alone in seeing his rack as an outward manifestation of social worth; rack manufacturer Yakima has printed the slogan “Overcome rack envy” on their catalogs and other promotional items.

At the other extreme you have:  me.  I never even wanted a car, much less a rack to put on it.  I don’t like cars.  I don’t like stuff.  While most people enjoy the retail experience, to me most purchases feel like a defeat of some kind.  And yet, I get by.  My lifelong refusal to buy a TV has resulted in four used-TV donations from concerned friends and family.  In college, my bike traveled to races on a badly oxidized piece of crap rear-mount Hollywood rack that my friend found at the beach.  On our way home from our final race of the collegiate season in 1990 we didn’t even bother with the rack—we just threw our bikes, and the rack, into the back of the car.

And yet, retail activity cannot be held off forever, and recently I decided to bite the bullet and buy a roof rack, so I could bring everybody’s bikes on a family vacation.  (Until now, I’ve used the two-bike Rhode Gear Super Shuttle rear rack I bought back in ’91 when I worked at a bike shop.)  This post chronicles my recent bike rack purchase and how it threw me into conflict with friends, family, and a salesman.  I also offer a few handy tips about saving money and frustration when you do buy a rack.

Build or buy?

Cheapness was a core value in my family.  When my dad decided we could bring our bikes on a family vacation, he built a rack for our weird two-door Saab station wagon.  (This was a family of six.)  The bikes went on the rack with both wheels attached and were held in place by custom-lathed wood pieces, a lot of rope, and the sheer force of my dad’s intellect.  Putting the bikes on the car took something like forty-five minutes and only my dad knew how to do it.  Removing the front wheel to improve aerodynamics was probably never considered:  gas was well under a dollar a gallon and the Kyoto Protocol was two decades away.  I don’t have a photo of that racks, but here’s a photo of a similar one my dad built five years later (and which he mounted to the original Saab roof rack he’d moved over to his Subaru).

In high school, when my brothers and friends and I were going to bike races every weekend, we made a giant roof rack for my friend’s late-‘70s Volvo wagon.  My brother Geoff had learned how to weld in shop class; he scrounged up a loaner welding rig somewhere and made wheel trays out of these giant pieces of iron fence material.  He welded struts to these, apparently made of scrap pig-iron, to cradle the wheels.  There were swinging aluminum struts that terminated in these crazy clamps that looked like the beak of a bird of prey.  I think we used sections of old inner tube to keep from scratching the bikes.  (I say “we” but upon reflection I doubt I actually helped, other than maybe to  sing and clap.)  Here’s a photo of that rack.  (Also shown is the Yakima rack we bought to supplement it, so we could carry eight or nine bikes at once.  To pay for that Yakima, we all worked for a week scrubbing a drained swimming pool with hydrochloric acid.)

So did I consider building my own rack this time around?  Not seriously.  I did take a quick look at ehow.com to see how they recommended building a rack.  What a joke.  Check it out here.  They have very cryptic instructions involving PVC and suction cups (!).  There are no diagrams or photos of any kind, other than a stock Getty Images photo of a sporty-looking dude standing in front of a car which has what appears to be a commercial bike rack on its roof.  The instructions say, “If you are a visual person, consider buying a bike rack and using it as model to make your own.  Then return it within the allowed time frame and with proper documentation for little to no charge.”  As you can see, whoever wrote those ehow instructions is going to burn in Hell.

Seeking advice

Some people love the process of selecting consumer goods:  the reviews, the consumer testimonials, the price comparisons, etc.  Not me.  I’m a pretty good price shopper once I know what I want, but I don’t kid myself that I can sort out what’s really the best product.  Fortunately, I’m on a bike club, EBVC, that’s chock full of bona-fide bike gear mavens.  I sent out a note asking for recommendations, little realizing—though I should have—how much dissent there would be.

One guy, a club veteran who raced the Red Zinger back in the ‘70s, wrote, “I know someone who took some thrashed old high-flange front hubs, cut the flanges to roughly match the contour of his cross bar, and clamped it down to the cross bar with a couple hose clamps.  We went to many races with that setup which cost about $1.25/bike.” 

Seems like a perfect idea, except that a) I don’t have crossbars to begin with ( the “towers” that fix them to the car’s room are the expensive part of the rack), and b) others on the club are convinced that any rack that holds the bike by the tips of the fork is dangerous to the health of the bike.  One guy wrote, “Fork bends side to side, and is not designed to do that...  I think this could be a real problem when it comes to carbon forks, where the weave is laid in accordance to the expected forces/stresses.”  Another agreed:  “I used a Yakima fork mount … and at the end of the season I found multiple stress fractures behind the head tube.”  This elicited a pointed response from yet another guy:  “I think the damage to the bike may well be attributed to the stresses incurred by ‘bubble butt.’”

Soon we had a full-on e-mail debate.  One friend cited a report from Lennard Zinn, who checked with several bike companies, all of whom said the fork-mount racks were fine.  Not that the industry shouldn’t capitalize on any fear the consumer base might have, my friend went on to say:  “Yakima does make a sorbothane-backed flannel bike wrap filled with goose down for its carbon outfitted clients.”   He concluded by pointing out, “EBVC should have a discussion group page on its website called ‘Sorry I Asked...’”

Others piled on with their points of view.  A couple guys recommended a rear-mount trailer-hitch rack that will hold four bikes.  Somebody else countered that  there are two types of people who use trailer-hitch racks:  those who have been rear-ended (and thus had their bikes wrecked), and those who are going to.  Needless to say somebody immediately pointed out that there are also two kinds of people who use roof racks:  those who have driven into the garage with the bike on top and those who are going to.  Oddly, nobody outwardly recommended the kind of roof rack where you leave both wheels on the bike.

I did consider that kind of rack, because it’s what the Cutters had on Mike’s car in “Breaking Away.”  That (apparently home-made) rack looked really cool, especially when Mike was “hot-rodding around campus.”  It didn’t seem to take Dave that long to put the bike on the car, though long enough that when Moocher smashed the time-clock’s face at the car wash (“Don’t forget to punch the clock, Shorty!”), thus quitting his job on his first day, the car was still there to take him away.  What if Mike’s car had a Yakima or Thule rack, and Mike had driven off before the offensive “Shorty” comment?  Maybe Moocher would have acted differently, and continued working at the car wash, and maybe Nancy would never have agreed to marry him.

With this cinematic moment swirling in my head along with all the conflicting bits of advice, suddenly the decision seemed bigger than just choosing a bike rack.  The problem with asking advice is that you may find yourself in the position of ignoring it, which means incurring a certain degree of social peril.  When my advisors disagree with one another, I can’t please all of them. 

It’s one thing when you’re ignoring the advice of friends—who can blow off the slight by saying, “Your bike sucks anyway, who cares if you wreck it”—but of course it’s worse with family, which is why I regret what I did next, which was to ask my dad what he thought.  I thought he might approve of the fork-mount rack on the basis of fuel efficiency, but he wrote back, “As to the stress of holding a bike by the dropouts:  I would not do it.  The riding stresses on a bike are never that kind of stress.  The center of gravity is always on the plane of symmetry of the bike, even when you are leaning way over in a hard turn, so the stresses are always symmetrical.  But when a car is going around a corner, the bike is not leaning, and one dropout gets hundreds of pounds of tension, which it was not designed for.   Also, I would worry about the fork top, which will have the same tension.” 

He also addressed my concern about fuel efficiency:  “Needless to say, I don't much care about extra gas costs ... what matters is extra CO2 and its effect on the future.”  His recommendation was to build a special both-wheels-on type of rack:  “drill holes in the roof and bolt the for-and-aft wheel troughs and other fittings directly to the roof, avoiding cross-wise bars which have lots of drag.”  Drill holes in my car?  I’d rather just leave my bike—or better yet, my car—at home.

The final bit of advice came from the REI salesman.  By the time I went there I was pretty sure I didn’t want the both-wheels-on type of rack (too expensive, not aerodynamic, and not recommended for carbon frames, which I may own one day), but still I asked him about rack types and wind drag.  He promptly replied, “If you care about wind drag” (Berkeley subtext:  “if you care about the planet”), “then you have to get the Thule.  It has been proven that the square crossbars of the Thule are more aerodynamic than the round crossbars of the Yakima.”  He delivered this statement almost triumphantly, seeming to expect that this rationale would carry the day.  Thus, he was visibly disappointed and seemed almost offended when I proceeded to buy the Yakima.  Frankly, I’d done more research on the Yakima’s compatibility with my car (not that I really doubted a Thule would fit fine) and was running out of time.  Plus, the Yakima bike mounts were cheaper. 

I suppose many a consumer would walk triumphantly out to his car, shouldering his cool new toy, whistling, pleased to have bought his way that much closer to a perfected life.  Not me.  I felt exhausted at the ordeal of ignoring good, solid advice, while possibly affronting friends, family, and the REI guy.  Plus I was out like $600 for a product whose very use would get me a hefty dose of liberal guilt, not to mention possibly damage my bike.  (During my road trip I put the cheaper, heavier bikes on the roof, while continuing to carry “my precious” on the rear-mount rack.)

Advice – Part 1

Okay, I promised in my introduction to give you some advice about bike racks.  The good thing about a blog is you can ignore my advice, or even privately ridicule it, without offending me.  (Or, if you’re a confrontational sort, you can comment below or e-mail me.)  

My first suggestion is this:  if you’re shopping for a rack and have factory-mounted rails on your car (i.e., that the bike rack mounts to), then skip buying the optional lock cores for your rack.  But wait, you protest.  Locks make so much sense!  After all, with one Allen wrench and about five minutes a thief could make off with the $600 rack.  And if the thief had an accomplice he could take the rack and all the bikes with it—a several thousand dollar haul.  Why wouldn’t you want to lock it up?

Well, I didn’t say not to lock it.  I said to skip the lock cores you can buy from the manufacturer.  First of all, they’re expensive:  $55 for a set of four Yakima cores, $60 for Thule.  I must admit, they’re pretty cool; though the Yakima website doesn’t explain this very well, these cores can be installed in the fork-holding mechanism so the bike is locked to the rack, and the same kind of core goes in the rack tower to lock the rack to the car.  One key does all the locks.  This amounts to what one person (trying to convince me to buy them) called the “clean, yuppie feeling” of buying something really slick, whatever the cost.  Well, I can do without that clean, yuppie feeling, especially if it costs me $55 (and was made in China for $0.45).

Second, these locks don’t secure the wheels of the bike.  The front wheels, if you choose to mount them to the rack (using the optional wheel holders), can be swiped in about thirty seconds.  If a thief didn’t mind climbing up on the car, he could steal the rear wheels too, in about a minute.  Sure, you could thread a cable and padlock through the wheels, but then you’ve just undone the essential slickness of the lock core system.

Meanwhile, at least in the case of Yakima racks, this system doesn’t look all that theft-proof.  All the lock core does to secure the rack to the car is to lock down the plastic housing over the inner workings of the rack tower.  You’ve got metal going into plastic.  Probably a good blow with the hammer would knock the cover clean off, and then you’ve got the rack off in minutes.

Instead, I suggest you do as I did and drill a hole through one of the bike trays.  (I’m sure I just nullified the warranty on my rack, but life will go on.)  Now, thread one end of a nice fat cable through one bike (getting the rear wheel and frame), then through itself (i.e., one cable end loop passes through the other), then through both the front wheels, through the other bike, and around the car’s factory rail.  Then use a padlock to lock the cable to the rack.  Look:

The lock’s shackle goes through a) the hole you drilled and b) the end loop on the cable.  Here are a couple of close-ups:

It’s not perfect—the padlock can be broken—but it’s a deterrent, and costs you very little (after all, what cyclist doesn’t own the cable already?).  For extra security, thread a U-lock (e.g., Kryptonite) through the cable and around the factory rail.

Note:  please don’t sue me because you followed this advice and had something stolen.  Any reasonably educated reader would immediately realize that, whatever utility he may happen to gain from the preceding advice, it was all meant to be completely facetious, even the photo.  (Nelson—do you think, with this paragraph, I’m covered?)

Advice – Part 2

The following pertains to the Yakima rack with its environment-destroying, life-ruining round crossbars.  If you have a Thule rack, you can read this bit anyway, just for that delicious smug feeling.

The round Yakima crossbars enable you to easily rotate the front wheel fork mount so it lies flat when not in use, improving aerodynamics.  The problem is, it rotates too easily.  No matter how hard I tighten the wing nuts, the fork won’t stay put.  As has been noted by three of the five customer reviews on the Yakima website, this results in the wheel rocking back until it hits the roof of the car.  Yakima suggests putting the wheel at a 60-degree angle to “prevent the build up of inertia.”  Well, this is a start, but I doubt it’s enough.

What worked really well for me was to install one wheel fork to each crossbar, one right behind the other (which is the most aerodynamic arrangement anyway, as one wheel drafts the other).  The fork that’s mounted to the front crossbar should be rotated toward the back.  The fork that’s mounted to the rear crossbar should be rotated forward.  Do this with each wheel installed in its fork, and rotate them until they meet in the middle.  Now secure them (i.e., fasten them to each other) with a zip-tie or a kid’s hair band or a toe strap.  This will make it physically impossible for the forks to rotate on the crossbar.  (Look at that last photo … you can see the zip-tie there.)

Advice – Part 3

I don’t need to advise you not to drive into the garage with your bike on the roof—I mean, that’s obvious—but since this has happened to so many of my friends, I’m going to give you two foolproof ways to avoid doing it.  But first, just in case you’ve never seen the results of this mistake, look at this (a recent photo from a friend).  Talk about a rack being hard on your bike’s fork!

One way to avoid this fate is to buy a house built in 1929 with a garage sized to  a Model T Ford.  That way, it’s physically impossible to drive your modern car into the garage, with your bike on the rack or not.  If, however, you’re one of those lucky people with a large garage you can actually use, then I suggest you remove the rack from your car when you’re not using it.  The added advantage is that you’ll get better gas mileage without that rack on your car.  (Plus, you’ve lowered the theft risk to near-zero.) 

I’m not suggesting you constantly install and deinstall your rack.  I’m suggesting that unless you’re a die-hard racer with a real flair for carpooling, you probably don’t need the rack on your car most of the time.  If you’re only toting one bike around, just throw it in the back of the car.  If you’re toting two bikes, use a rear-mount bike rack.  If you’re driving to a stage race and really need the convenience of a roof rack, then throw the rack back on the car for your trip.  Once the rack has been set up, it’s quick and easy to take it on and off the car.

Conclusion

Chances are you already have a rack, already have the lock cores, will never buy a rear-mount rack, and don’t agonize so much over such simple things.  If so, I guess I envy you that.  But at least now I can look at my kickass Yakima rack, leaning against the wall of the garage waiting to be remounted someday, and think “Ohhhh yeahhhh.”

Earth Hour

What is Earth Hour?

If you don’t know what Earth Hour is, then you’ve missed it for this year.  It ended a little bit ago.  But read on, so you’ll know what to do next year.

If you already know what Earth Hour is, read on anyway, because I’ll share my favorite tidbits, show a highlights reel of the website, take on some Earth Hour haters, and show you my own Earth Hour video, taken less than an hour ago.

So:  what is it?  Earth Hour is an annual event that lasts one hour—or, rather, one hour per time zone.  At 8:30 p.m. local time, you turn off all your lights.  It’s as simple as that.  If everybody participated, the world would go pretty dark (other than streetlights and such, of course).  The idea is to raise awareness about energy conservation.  Here’s a photo from last year:

As you can see, it’s not a hugely dramatic effect.  Frankly, I find the above photo a bit sad—imagine how much darker that skyline could stand to get.  Even though I live in the Berkeley area, which I think of as the Prius Belt, almost nobody I’ve asked about Earth Hour has even heard of it.  My participation this year felt a bit Quixotic.  But if enough people tilted at enough windmills, some nice momentum could build.  So here I am, doing my part to spread the word.

The Earth Hour website

You can get all kinds of details, of course, at the official website.  They have all the usual links to history, happenings, and such, along with a “fun stuff” section for kids.  (If your kids aren’t too jaded by games like Grand Theft Auto – Innocent Bystander Senseless Execution Edition, perhaps they’ll get a kick out of the Virtual Lightswitch, Virtual Lantern, Lights Out Game, and Pocoyo’s Recycling Game.) 

The first thing you’re likely to see, though, is a little video of Miranda Kerr, the Earth Hour ambassador, promoting the “I Will If You Will” challenge:

“I Will If You Will” is a charming way for people to engage with Earth Hour.  People put up videos of themselves describing what little stunt they’ll do if enough people reciprocate with Earth-friendly behaviors.  Ms. Kerr, for example, offered to “challenge the whole KORA Organics team to offset their carbon emissions for all flights for 2012 if 500 people agree to do the same.”  But any Joe can propose any kind of deal, and some of them are delightfully wacky.  Click here to check them out. 

Here’s a highlight:

The quota is met by people pledging, with a mouse-click, right there on the site.  Another participant promised, “I will play the piano live on the web for 8 hours nonstop if 5,000 people start recycling.”  Two firemen standing before a skyscraper declared, “We’ll climb this entire building, 96 stories, wearing all our gear” (“or shirtless!” the other threw in), “if 5,000 people take public transit for 1 week.”

The following pledge looks a bit problematic:

I hope the guy who made that promise understands that universities have an admissions process. 

Another pledge that gave me pause was from a woman who declared, “If 10,000 people commit to recycling, I’ll propose to my boyfriend.”  I sure hope she consulted with him first so he’s not caught off-guard.  And what if 10,000 people don’t accept her offer?  Is she then free to propose anyway, or is the marriage off? 

My favorite was a guy promising, “If 5,000 sign up for Earth Hour, I’ll cut my hair like this guy” [here he held up the photo you see below], “all beautiful and shiny like the day he was born, except for the sides and the back.”  (This challenge is titled “I’ll shave my head ‘male pattern baldness’ style.”)

Even though this year’s Earth Hour is over, you should check out the event’s YouTube site, because lots of participants will have uploaded their Earth Hour videos to it.

The haters

I didn’t have to look very hard to find people who are opposed to Earth Hour.  In thirty seconds on Google (I consider Wikipedia cheating), I found two articles arguing against it.  I will now dismember both arguments, just for sport.

I’ll start with the weaker of the two essays.  It’s by a fellow named Keith Lockitch, writing in the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.  Dr. Lockitch writes, “This blindness to the vital importance of energy is precisely what Earth Hour exploits,” and that “what we really need is greater awareness of just how indispensable carbon-based energy is to human life (including, of course, to our ability to cope with any changes in the climate).” 

Um, excuse me, but doesn’t an appreciation for the benefit of carbon fuels mean conserving them so they don’t run out?  And who isn’t aware of the benefits of electricity?  How should society address this supposed lack of awareness?  Should we have a Carbon Energy Hour once a year?  I can imagine the slogans.  “Reading at night?  Try a lamp!”  “Wet hair?  Dry it fast, with electricity!”  The “I Will If You Will” challenges would be extra fun.  “If 1,000 people let their car engines run all night, I’ll run my blender continuously on ‘frappé’ until all the oil in the motor burns up and it seizes, and then I’ll go buy another one!”

And exactly how are we supposed to use carbon-based energy to cope with climate change?  Put all the carbon emissions in a rocket and fire it into space?  Dr. Lockitch’s position is idiotic, and the fact of his Ph.D. should be an embarrassment to the institution of higher education.

The other anti-Earth-Day view I encountered is from Maggie Koerth-Baker, writing in the Huffington Post.  She is far more levelheaded and articulate than Dr. Lockitch, but I must still take issue with her assertions: 

“This event perpetuates myths about environmentalism and gives people the wrong idea about what it will actually take to solve our energy problems....  In fact, in places where lots of people participate, there might even be a small, temporary uptick in emissions. When fossil fuel power plants are forced to rapidly increase or decrease the amount of electricity they produce, they also produce more emissions....  Some people see Earth Hour … and come away thinking that all they have to do is shut off some lights sometimes, and everything will be fixed....  The solutions to our energy problems don’t start with individuals shutting the lights off at home.  They start with public policy—the only force that can actually change how the infrastructure and shared systems work.”

I agree that public policy is really important, but I also highly doubt that many Earth Hour participants would so totally miss the point of the event.  The website makes it very clear that Earth Hour is simply a way to raise awareness about energy conservation and foster a public dialog.  (Ms. Koerth-Baker is a beneficiary of this dialog; she gets a nice hook to hang her policy observations on.)  Government energy policy will never change until the public demonstrates that it cares, and Earth Hour is an easy way to make a visible show of support.  What is Ms. Koerth-Baker’s alternative to Earth Hour:  to organize a worldwide Energy Infrastructure Policy Hour, where once a year everybody stops what they’re doing, heads to a government office, and spends an hour engaging meaningfully with the political machinery that regulates energy use?

Meanwhile, Ms. Koerthbaker’s article contradicts itself.  On the one hand, she asserts that individuals shutting off lights at home doesn’t materially impact energy use, but on the other hand she says Earth Hour might cause an uptick in emissions as the lights come back on.  Well, which is it?  Given how few people participate in Earth Hour, while all that electricity-drawing infrastructure continues to run, how could this event affect the power grid?  And if it did, wouldn’t that suggest that individual behavior really does have an impact?  Ms. Koerthbaker has some valid points, but she strikes me as one of those over-critical scolds who manage to teeter between idealism and cynicism.

My household’s Earth Hour

To me, one of the most important opportunities for Earth Hour is to get kids thinking about energy use.  Earth Hour ties in nicely with my constant harangues to my own kids about turning off the light when you leave a room.  It should help them recognize that lots of people care about conservation—that this concern isn’t just another strange idiosyncrasy of their father’s.

So I took some effort to make this event meaningful and fun for my daughters.  We discussed what climate change is, and why “global warming” is a problematic term for it.  I described how grizzly bears are venturing ever further north and are now mating with polar bears.  We talked about the actual meaning of Earth Hour, just in case my kids had thought the event would fix everything all by itself.  (They hadn’t.)  They actually got pretty excited and were looking forward to having all the lights out.

To officially mark the beginning of Earth Hour we made this video, with my older daughter working the camera:

As you can see, I didn’t want anybody to have a lapse and flick on a light during the hour, so I left nothing to chance and cut power to the entire house.  Once the hour began, we agreed not to use any portable electronic devices, since recharging batteries later would simply shift, not eliminate, our Earth Hour electricity use.  I did use one flashlight, but it’s powered by a magnet sliding through a copper coil as you flip it back and forth.  I was sorely tempted to use an MP3 player, because  at dinner at a neighborhood restaurant they’d been playing Foreigner's insanely catchy “Waiting For a Girl Like You” and I badly needed a song graft.  But I managed to hold out. 

The kids will long remember Earth Hour, I think.  They were stoked to make the movie, and enjoyed the candlelight.  (In a grudging nod to the Ayn Rand set, I pointed out to my daughters that going without electricity wouldn't be so fun if it lasted a month.)  I read to my younger daughter from The Mysterious Benedict Society, and then it was the kids’ bedtime.  I looked around the neighborhood:  plenty of lights still on.  Earth Hour is still a small movement.  At 9:30, I flipped the power back on and reset some clocks.

After Earth Hour was over, I was inspired to my check out my utility company’s website to see what kind of statistics they can provide.  To my surprise, they do provide the ability to track usage by day (though of course today’s usage won’t be posted until tomorrow).

Were it not for Earth Day, I probably would not have remembered my energy company’s Smart Metering announcement and would not have discovered how precisely I can monitor my electricity (and gas) usage.  And without a public interest in such analytics, the power company likely wouldn’t provide them.  See?  This is exactly the kind of awareness that events like Earth Hour can produce.

So, are you in for next year? 

dana albert blog