So Earth Hour 2008. Apparently it happened last year too, but I didn't hear about it. I was very busy at this time of year last year, so I can understand that. If you haven't heard about it, people all around the world are turning their lights (and appliances?) off for one hour today (Saturday) at 8 pm. It started in New Zealand, yesterday our time. The idea is that everyone doing this will make a statement about the connection between energy use and climate change. That, I fully support. This whole Earth Hour thing I do not support.

First of all, I think it's just a gimmick. It's something people can do and then brag about how great they are around the watercooler on Monday morning. And though I support people taking small but productive steps toward change that will benefit the environment, come on-- one hour a YEAR? How much time is one hour a year? There are 366 days this year, so that's 8784 hours. 1/8784= .000114= .0114% of the year. Do people realize they turn their lights off for many hours every night while they sleep? That's 33% of the year, if people sleep 8 hours a night. How come people aren't bragging about that? That, and Earth Hour is at 8 pm on Saturday night. How much is really going on then? How about 2 pm on Tuesday? That would be a far larger impact. Think about what would have to stop: lots. It would interrupt business. How about one hour a week? One hour a day? But here we reach the ugly truth: this would be inconvenient. People wouldn't feel good about it anymore, they would feel grumpy. Also, I saw some before and after photos of the Opera House in Sydney, and although this may not be how it ultimately was, what they showed was that they turned off the lights that illuminate the lovely "sails" of the House, but the lights at ground level were still on.

So, I will not be participating. I think it's stupid. Like I said, it's great if people want to make a change, even a small one, but I don't think that this is even that.

Tonight, instead of being concerned about Earth Hour, I'm going to a small dinner party (I will be turning off the lights when I leave the house, like I always do). Mark is hosting for those of us who missed his large first party (when I was at the conference meeting in Sidney a couple weeks ago). He was the one I met at the ferry and brought back here after I was in Blaine, and he'd been in the arctic. While he was there, he went caribou hunting, and so tonight we'll be having caribou stew, or cari-stew, as I think it should be called. I've never had caribou before, so I'm interested to try it out.

But now I have to work, because I took Thursday off. I hope you all have a lovely Saturday, and enjoyed reading about my opinions this morning.