Earth Hour Coming Saturday; One Group Says Keep The Lights On
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The World Wildlife Fund and environmentalists in dozens of nations are urging you to turn out your lights for an hour Saturday night, for the sixth annual Earth Hour.
But as WBBM Newsradio's Bob Roberts reports, a conservative think tank wants you to turn your lights on.
Restaurants will serve by candlelight. High rises will go dark. But Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is countering with the "Human Achievement Hour," with its slogan of "turn your lights on."
Its symbol is an old-school incandescent bulb:
She says back in the day, Thomas Edison and other inventors were not afraid to go to work on what was then new technology. But she says a lot of that entrepreneurial savvy stays on the sideline today because of costs driven by government regulations and taxes.
"If you put these walls, taxes, disincentives for people to go out and experiment, and innovate, that innovation is so much slower," Minton said. "It takes so much longer to get those efficient, so-called greener solutions that we all really wanted."
Minton says the answer is scrapping environmental regulation.
The Institute is a leading skeptic of global warming.
