Earth Hour 2009

Okay, I’m not the hippest person in the world, but I was surprised that I had never heard of Earth Hour before. Earth Hour stared 2 years ago in Australia. In 2008, it spread like wildfire. And this year they are planning something bigger. They are hoping for 1 billion participants.

And it is really quite simple. Turn off your lights for one hour, starting at 8:30PM on Saturday, March 28, 2009 (local time). Their website (http://www.earthhour.org/home/) calls it a vote for the planet. It also says that if you don’t turn off your lights, you’re voting for global warming. Okay, that seems a tad harsh to me. Was my name on some list distributed last year as voting for global warming?

I do plan to partake in Earth Hour this year. Even I can go for one hour without lights. Max might have some trouble, but he’ll cope, loudly. And I’ll come up with some story for Richard.

But I would like to propose taking it a step further. Spend one hour a week using no electricity.

Sit down folks, there is no need to panic. I understand you have some issues. Many issues.

I understand. You feel the need to keep the VCR powered up, or you will never figure out how to set the time again. I say just give it up. Just ignore the time on your VCR. Trust me, after a few years you get used to it blinking “12:00AM”. But I know some of you are too anal for that.

So start simple. Pick an hour a week when you don’t need electricity and make sure everything easily and harmlessly turned off is turned off. It’s spring! Go outside for one flipping hour! Don’t unplug anything. You may forget to plug the refrigerator back in. That would be bad. Just make sure that everything that should be turned off, is turned off.

You might enjoy it!