As environmentalists guilt-trip people into shutting off technology for an hour Saturday evening, a free-market think tank is urging Americans to celebrate all mankind has achieved to make life safer, healthier and happier.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is holding its annual Human Achievement Hour at 8:30 p.m. on March 24 in all time zones, urging anyone who has benefitted from technology to tweet their favorite human achievement with “#HAH2018” and enjoy an hour reveling in what “human ingenuity, affordable energy, and the freedom” have created.
In an effort to ease the minds of those troubled by trying to choose what technological marvel to celebrate, CEI put together a list of possible activities:
- Checking social media from your smartphone
- Watching your favorite TV show or movie thanks to satellite technology
- Participating in the craft brewing revolution with a cold drink
- Facetiming or Skyping with far-off friends and family
- Traveling home from a night out with a rideshare driver
- Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family
CEI began the Human Achievement Hour as a direct response to Earth Hour, an environmental campaign by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise awareness of climate change and biodiversity and push for “environmentally-friendly laws.”
“Biodiversity and nature underpin our lives, our economies, our health, our well-being, our happiness. It is the foundation of our living planet,” WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini said in statement on Earth Hour. “As we push the planet and its natural systems to the edge, Earth Hour is our chance to use our power, as individuals and as a collective, to demand and take action to protect this web of life in return for all it gives us. For the benefit of all life on Earth and of our own future.”
Recognizing that human happiness and health is not built on a foundation of “biodiversity and nature,” CEI is pushing a celebration of the freedom that allows people to innovate and create the very technology WWF is taking advantage of to spread its Earth Day campaign.
“Technology, affordable energy, and the competitive economies that brought electricity to the developed world are precisely what will allow us to continue to prosper as we address the global challenges ahead,” CEI stated. “Instead of sitting in the dark, Human Achievement Hour asks us all to celebrate the human spirit—and support a free society in which ever greater success is possible.”
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