PrintJune 24, 2010
Japanese Told More Sleep Means Less Global Warming
It appears that global warming madness has reached new heights in the land of the rising, yet somehow non-climate-driving, sun. In an effort to reduce the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels within the next decade, the Japanese government has begun urging citizens to go to bed and get up an hour earlier.
An Environment Ministry spokesman told the Telegraph that by not wasting nighttime electric power on such things as “watching TV until very late,” a typical Japanese family can reduce its carbon dioxide footprint by 85kg a year.
So, add waking hours to the growing list of that which enviro-mental-cases would have us enjoy less of to solve the non-problem of manmade global warming.
Last March, a statistician at Oregon State University in Corvallis suggested that Americans should have fewer children, because “children come with a high carbon cost.” So long, son.
Last October, the authors of Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living warned that “the eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometers a year.” Farewell Fido.
In 2008, IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri proposed the entire world “give up meat for one day [per week] at least initially, and decrease it from there” to help cool the planet by ridding it of livestock-grazing-caused deforestation and livestock-excreting-caused increases in atmospheric methane. Bye-Bye, Big-Mac.
We’ve also been asked to raise our thermostats in the summer and lower them in the winter and to do so in much smaller houses. Unless, of course, we’re Al Gore, who just purchased a five bedroom, nine bathroom mansion in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, complete with six carbon-burning fireplaces.
We’ve also been asked to raise our thermostats in the summer and lower them in the winter and to do so in much smaller houses. Unless, of course, we’re Al Gore, who just purchased a five bedroom, nine bathroom mansion in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, complete with six carbon-burning fireplaces.
Not to mention drive smaller, less safe, cars and, unless jetting around the world to lecture others on the importance of lowering their “carbon-footprint,” forgo air travel altogether.
Of course, in addition to using less energy, we should be willing to pay much, much, more for that which we do use. And all for goals which are as unattainable as they are unrelated to the climate, which has seen a cooling trend for more than a decade despite atmospheric CO2 levels continuing to rise.
Now, sending couples to bed earlier under the guise of saving the planet might actually save something else entirely – Japanese culture. You see, the nation is battling a growing populace decline -- Japan's population is estimated to have shrunk by 75,000 last year, which is 1.46 times the 2008 decrease.
Then again, even were the unintended consequence of this nutty idea to be a much-needed spike in Japanese babies, government greenies would surely consider the new arrivals to be carbon-breathing, meat-eating, procreating, pet loving, shelter demanding and energy wasting parasites.
Now that’s something the people should definitely sleep on.
