Earth Hour Dims to New Lows

British Colombians who participated in this year's Earth Hour saved the least amount of energy yet, achieving only a 1.04% drop in energy use. Earth Hour is designed to raise awareness for global warming--er, climate change, an issue I would have thought didn't need any further awareness. I think people are aware enough, I think fewer people this year care. Whether its the leaked Climategate emails showing that scientists fudged data and blocked any dissenting scientific opinions from being published, or its the Nobel-winning UN science team citing anecdotes, off-the-cuff comments and articles from hiking magazines as scientific sources, people have had their faith in the global warming threat shaken, and are accepting less the doomsday scenarios painted by environmentalists. To me, Earth Hour is yet another in a long-list of stunts that do little but grab headlines. After all, dimming the lights for an hour will do nothing to halt whatever climate change we may be experiencing. Perhaps this year's decline in Earth Hour savings is mere coincidence, the result of a few too many people watching a movie instead of genuflecting to this newest eco-tradition. But just maybe, the dim Earth Hour this year is due to people realizing that climate change is too complex an issue to be dealt with by do-gooder yet do-nothing stunts. Perhaps they realize that any reasoned debate on the issue doesn't revolve around the tar sands or the seal hunt or the Chicken Little posturing of the David Suzuki crowd, but rather involves painful trade-offs and implications for our future growth, prosperity and our very way of life and dimming the lights only dims the debate on these real-world obstacles and issues.