Earth's arbitrary hour.

My involvement in Earth Hour (8.30pm-9.30pm last night) was largely due to my wife's position as Sustainability Team Leader at her workplace. This means she has the unenviable task of devising green initiatives and getting others to play along. In solidarity we also "celebrated" (if that's the appropriate word) earth hour at our home last night with a candle-lit dinner with some friends we recruited that afternoon, with the lure of some delicious rice risotto. HA HA!!!



One of my friends had been of the same opinion as Paul Henry and Michael Laws that he should spend his earth hour using as much power as possible to offset any effects of the "gesture" put forward by earth hour proponents. Natalie and I were most happy to thwart this plan, and just look how much happier he was for it! What a happy chappy!



It really was just a gesture though and didn't aspire to be anything more, I probably used as much power as we saved during earth hour driving to the supermarket to buy candles (which we don't have around the house, of course). It simply gave us something to do for the night, and showed us how much fun you can have when you change the parameters of your daily rigmarole.

This morning we woke to Finlay Macdonald on Radio Live spouting some idea about Gaia, and that if Global Warming is happening, it's just the earth (a living organism) adjusting to humanity. I've heard this hokum before, and it overlooks one important factor: I don't care if the planet survives, I care if humanity survives, and if the planet's way of "adjusting" to humanity is to create an inhospitable climate for humanity then we are screwed.

Earth hour's probably on its way through Bible belt, mid-west USA at the moment... I wonder how that's going.