Celebrate Human Achievement Hour
By Edward Hudgins

March 18, 2016 -- If you want to celebrate human progress, you can light up the world, symbolically and literally, at Human Achievement Hour. On Saturday, March 19 between 8:30 and 9:30pm, turn on all your lights and post photos of your enlightened act!

The Competitive Enterprise Institute each year spearheads this observance so that people around the world can pay tribute to the human innovations that allow us to live better, fuller lives. The occasion highlights especially the importance of energy in improving the lives of all people.
 

The future is today

There is so much to celebrate! By every standard, life is materially better. Thanks to modern medical and health practices, global life expectancy over the past century has doubled. In the industrialized world, the vast majority of us have heated and air conditioned homes. We have inexpensive and healthy food, and refrigeration to preserve it. We have labor-saving devices like washing machines that free up women especially from hours of drudgery. We can travel to any place on earth in less than a day. We can communicate directly with billions and have access to the wealth of human knowledge instantly.

In the future, things could be even better. We’ve seen just in the past few years technologies that have allowed the blind to see, bionic devices that have allowed the lame to walk, and genetic engineering that has cured cancers!

This is the future of which billions of people in the past could not even have conceived. The billion who are still terribly poor in the present wish it would be their future.
 

The dark threat of environmentalism

But there is a darkening of these bright skies, and it’s coming from the culture. For example, in recent years environmental groups have promoted Earth Hour... (continue reading here.)