Smug Conformity

It was 'lights out!' everywhere on Saturday night. Instructive to glance outside the house to fleetingly determine who among your neighbours are the meek and the mild, the conformists, those unwilling to demonstrate their lack of awareness, of sensitivity, of respect for the environment and environmentalists. Why, even Parliament Hill demonstrated its delicate awareness of Earth Hour.

If our politicians can invest in that little tip of the hat to climate change, then why not the SUV-and van-driving neighbours? You know, the ones that cried foul when the new by-laws came into effect that pesticides and herbicides could no longer be used legally for the beautification of their lawns and gardens? The same people that can't be bothered with a backyard composter to diminish the amount of garbage they send to the dump?

The people who use power washers to clean down their driveways? Who wash their vehicles assiduously on a weekly basis? Who could never conceive of the possibility of washing a sinkful of dishes by hand? Who, regardless of the weather, turn their sprinklers on in the summer lest their green lawns languish and turn brown? They're the ones too that turn up their house heat in the winter so they can comfortably wear shorts.

But come the visibility of a bright light in an unheeding household and that's not where they're at. The Earth Hour chortles its success in four thousand cities and towns across 88 countries where, they claim, "hundreds of millions of people" switch off their lights for an hour. That's a wonderful solution to the bugbear of global warming - sorry, climate change.

If the idea is to make people think about the energy we use and abuse, is this the solution?