Earth Hour Follow-up

Earth Hour is over. It was intimately fun, globally exciting, but quite frankly a little anti-climactic here in Ottawa.

So now what?

I enjoyed my Earth Hour. The timing was perfect: dinner was ready at 19:59, lights were out at 20:00. We celebrated with a candlelight dinner and a bottle of Chardonnay. We even continued the theme well past the hour, curling up on the couch by candlelight to watch the John Wayne flick we’d rented.

So now what.

Now that I’ve marked the cause by shutting down for 60 minutes, what am I ready to do for the remainder of the year? What are you ready to do?

Skeptics complain that an hour filled with hoopla, hype and parties won’t save the day – I agree. Saturday’s Earth Hour was not a magic fix for our broken environment; it was a campaign to increase awareness. It gave us an excellent, perhaps much needed excuse to shut down, be still and reflect. But it was not a fix. The fix will come from us and the choices we make every hour of every day.

I’m hoping that in a year from now I’ll be marking my second Earth Hour with a candlelight potluck party, discussing earth-friendly lifestyles changes that stemmed from this one. Anyone care to join me?