According to the event's website:
- At 7.30pm on 31 March 2007, we are inviting Sydneysiders - businesses and individuals - to turn off their lights for just one hour, Earth Hour, as a sign of their commitment to reduce global warming.
While only 50,000+ households participated, the opera house, many other landmarks, and hundreds of enterprises went dark. It is not hard to see what segments of the society contain the highest percentage of nutcases - and a country led by a conservative government is obviously not safe.
Figure 1: Switch off for brighter future. It sounds as some kind of parody of the communist slogans except that it's the real title of the article! ;-)
Note the huge progress. In Paris, they have only organized a five-minute-long "lights out" campaign before the IPCC summary for policymakers was released. Sydney has tried one hour. What's the next step: New York one day without electricity? :-) Good luck!
Figure 2: The neo-liberal (up) and environmentalist (down) version of the same place in Sydney. Which one do you prefer? Let's admit that the lighting of the neo-liberal picture was improved in a Photoshop. Click the picture for more pictures from Tim Blair.
Needless to say, even if you believe the whole man-made global warming orthodoxy, lighting is a ridiculous contribution. In the U.S., about 67 percent of the electricity is consumed by electric motors and only about 23 percent by lighting. About 1/10 of the lighting electricity is consumed by households.
Next year, the event will go global.
