Around the world last night households were urged to shut off their lights from 8PM to 9PM, in an effort to display the amount of energy that can be saved through such simple efforts.
While it may be that many of those who participated feel they are environmentally conscious, and perhaps engage in regular efforts to reduce waste and energy use, this whole stunt reeks of feel-good, self-congratulatory tokenism.
If it's possible to go without light for an hour on March 29th, then why not on March 30th, or 31st? Why not every night of the year? At what point do we consider Seinfeld re-runs a worthwhile trade-off for even the smallest amount of electricity?
It boils down to priorities, and unfortunately many people seem to be perfectly comfortable with killing the planet bit by bit for the chance to see who gets cut on American Idol this week. Of course, if we admit that even a single ounce of coal being burned is too high a price to pay for bad television, or even *gasp* good television, then we're forced to seriously reevaluate our lifestyles.
The figures that get tossed around about how many thousands of gallons of oil, or how many tens of thousands of cars off the road last nights actions were equivalent to, should not make us feel good. Rather, it should shock us to our cores with the realization of how much energy is routinely used for our amusements and luxuries. With such staggering amounts of energy being used on an hourly basis, what hope do these yearly stunts have of making a difference.
Is it better than doing nothing at all? One could certainly argue that it's not. Much like the largely superficial gestures of buying a hybrid car or (even worse) using ethanol, these actions do very little to change our overall outlook or lifestyles any more than British Petroleum using a pretty green logo, or Hummer commercials featuring beautiful landscapes makes them less destructive. What does happen is that it allows people to assuage their consciouses. Rather than engaging in truly meaningful, drastic lifestyle changes, such as getting rid of their televisions, cell phones and cars, growing their own food, buying locally, living collectively and so forth, people feel contented being able to make relatively meaningless claims of participating in "Earth Hour" or reducing their "carbon footprint". Meanwhile, mountains continue to be blown up, rivers poisoned, and poor people and children in other countries killed and diseased, so that we can get a new HDTV ("It's necessary starting next year!").
Of course, this is being typed on a late model computer, under fluorescent lighting, so clearly we all draw our own lines, and we all have our own situations, needs and circumstances to try to balance. But it's important to be ever critical, and to continuously weigh the cost and the benefit of any action we take or purchase we make as it relates to protecting the life on this planet.
