EARTH HOUR-MARCH 28,2009: LIGHTS OUT!!!

On March 28, 2009, all over the world, people for one hour will be turning their lights out. Seriously. And you should also.

Now for most people, the reason behind the worldwide effort, is to promote 'Earth Hour' like 'Earth Day' and raise awareness of Global Warming and other planetary interests. Even Google turns black that day becoming the 'other' black site on the net. It started in Australia when just one city had a 'lights out' hour a few years ago, and has now spread into a grassroots, worldwide movement.

Typically on Sedition Act we deal with ethical and holocaust related topics, so one may think we have strayed in this venture, but nothing could be farther from the truth. On March 28th, I will indeed turn off my lights during that hour, and my computer, and my television, and every other electrical appliance I can find, at least for the afternoon. I will do it for the following reasons, leaving the global warming issue to everyone else:

1. Turning off the electric worldwide shows that all of us unessential, unimportant peasantry, en Mass can bring down giants.
2. Turning off the lights shows visibly how many of us are out their, who want a safe and peaceful planet, not given to the ravages of amoral corporations.
3. Turning off the lights worldwide sends a little message to the kind sir folks at the Oil Companies, that the Giant you have become is no Goliath next to our small smooth stone of putting a finger to a switch in our own household.
4. Turning off the Lights will save an enormous amount of money and energy and fuel, even for one hour.
5. Turning off the lights teaches our children that we as the lesser important citizens of the nations of the world have a voice and are not without power.
6. Turning off the lights sets a worldwide net work of standing up to the unconscionable acts of the violence against our earth and its inhabitants.
7. Turning off the lights shows how many of us there are who do not want it the way it is going.

Hitler , Darre and Environmentalism

Not to neglect WWII and the Shoah, it should be mentioned that the only positive thing (partial though it was) that came out of the Third Reich, was a move to environmentalism, through a man named Darre who because of the push to incorporate the principles of 'Blood and Soil' (blut und boden), sought ways to preserve, enhance, and purify the land and environment of Germany. However, Darre eventually resigned when there became a divide between the sinister agenda of Hitler's government and his own aims.

As the years grew though, most of the people who headed the Environmental and 'World' days were secularists, sometimes New Agers, and occasionally scientists, until we all began to wake up and realize, through talk of depleting resources and peak Oil, global warming and the like that we cannot ignore a planet in entropy. Our children have to live in the muck we leave behind. In the early days there were books like 'The Hundredth Monkey" and the Population Bomb , and then Earth Days in schools, but most were coordinated by more radical elements, and the concern for the environment was there, but not forefront. Through the years though we have seen mass efforts of 'acceptability' and now we have the Green Channel, Planet Green, Green movements, Green products, state and city sponsored recycling, cleanups, etc and the American public is quite acclimated to the whole idea of 'going green'.

Christians and Environmentalism

When I first became a Christian, I found in the more fundamental circles I traveled in that 'Christianity' was identified almost entirely with conservative politics, and at the time, through the Reagan administration with the likes of Butz, there was an almost anti-environmental viewpoint. Corporations were allowed basically to do whatever they could get away with. There was a constant dialogue of extremes between people who would support free range chickens over human life, to the heartless Corporate ultra conservatives who considered the environment a mere means to an end. Most have come to more integrated positions since then.

Christians, however, generally stayed out of the eminent discussions regarding the preservation of the environment for years. A few who called themselves 'Christian Environmentalists' might sponsor church clean-up days, or community projects, but little was focused on doctrinally. I always found that terribly odd of believers who from the Garden through Adam were instructed to name and tend the Garden and later to tend the ground and grow food and have dominion over creation, to have somehow lost that very important issue over centuries. When you live in a house, you dust and polish furniture, you vacuum and scrub, disinfect, and organize, not just from pride but because you have a concept of dignity, health, and 'caretaking' for what you have been given. Why that idea did not extend to the environment escapes me, but we have been given a very reasonable habitation called earth, which if cared for will last to the end, but instead we relegate the issue to oblivion.

Fundamental Christians often delegate the reason for non-intervention to the fact that so many environmental groups have a 'New Age' or secular attitude, and some are even occultic. For that reason , stressing 'separation' (in the world but not of the world) they vied away from concern for Environmental issues and movements, separating glass from plastic, from cardboard for recycling but little else.

The separation issue is paramount for the Christian: we are not to have blind ecumenism with others who do not believe in the "Way, the truth and the Life", those who believe that all ways are o.k., reasoning that God doesn't really care. The Word of God teaches quite differently through the Old and New Testament, that we are 'sanctified' meaning 'set apart' for the purposes of God, and that we are not to taint the truth of the Word of God with untruths, or unholy and unhealthy alliances. Some though take this to mean that we should abandon issues such as caring for the environment, but the opposite is really true. We were from Eden to care for every aspect of earthly life, caring for it as a gift from God.

For that reason, even though I am more a strict separationist than anyone would guess, I believe that unlike other efforts, March 28th EARTH HOUR should be endorsed and participated in by even conservative Christians who adhere as I do to the Word as final and perfect authority. I do not endorse all of the tenets of every person who founded or promotes earth day, nor do I claim it as a christian endeavor or an ecumenical one. I do believe though that the massive participation of common citizens, including Christians, will 'tell some bad guys off' , so to speak, about how many of us wish to keep the earth as our Messiah would have us keep it, and while we cannot and should not join hands on many things, we should take our stand to show that we have the power and strength to stand against the insurmountable.

Auschwitz & Oil

I will be turning my LIGHTS OUT for another reason: in honors of millions of human beings who died enslaved in the concentration camps, particularly the Auschwitz-Monowitz, Birkenau, Furstengrube complex, who were criminally enslaved by Oil and other companies not just from Germany but from the US. Exxon , formerly Standard Oil (note the 'double cross'), DuPont and other companies owned massive interests in a company called DeGussa, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben, a chemical company which manufactured Zyklon B, and which enslaved thousands in the production of it and other chemical products. Now the the largest corporation of all time, it still has blood on its hands, and I believe will continue to have more. They are generally thought to be unbeatable at anything.

Yet war after war is now fought with facades regarding terrorism and justice when the truth is, they are being fought for the control of Oil, and that is not really unknown, just unspoken. We use geometrically more oil than any other country, more than double Britain, and ten times China per capita. I say, we have no right just for the privilege of luxury and comfort while the rest of the world is forced to conserve. Much of what we have is not obtained fairly or even legally, but at the expense of others. We decry Hitler and the Nazis for the wasting of the Ukraine for the sake of feeding Germany, while we do the same thing here. I will be turning off my lights and electricity, not just on EARTH HOUR, but every chance I get, if nothing else to say, "because WE CAN (apologies to Chabad). I will be saying, "I can fight you and your companies no other way, I have neither money nor power that would affect one aspect of your sinister business alone, but with millions, we can instruct YOU how our planet will function and operate and not have you tell us, what we must bow down to. I will be turning my lights off to say "I do not approve, as a Christian of the rape of oil-rich companies, even if they are not Christian, just so we can live in luxuries others cannot afford." I will be saying, "I know how powerful and dangerous you are, and how little you appreciate perspectives such as mine, but we live and die alike, and with the small insignificant people of this world, we will tell YOU that our world will survive and be livable, rather that entertain your demonic attitude of 'waste everything you can, glut everything you can, use anyone you can and dispose of them-its ruined anyway."

I will be saying, though you will not understand and will mark me as naive, "I will with what little ability I have, work to protect the very fine world God created and gave me, and others, and which you are destroying." Others may have their global warming issues, but when I turn off the Lights on March 28th, it will be in honor of the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, whose light is not dimmed.

ALL LIGHTS OFF MARCH 28th. IT MATTERS.