No Lights, No Effect?

Last Saturday night from eight to nine, my friends I crowded around my living room table...in the dark. A few candles allowed us to locate our wine glasses, but that was the only light source.

Million and maybe billions of people participated in Earth Hour last Saturday night. The event's purpose was to make a statement about global climate change by collectively not using electricity for one hour, one night of the week, one week a year.

This left people wondering, what was the effect? In Sydney, Australia it was expected that energy use would go down five percent that night, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

It's been criticized that the event has no real impact in terms of energy use reduction. But, really it was more of a social movement. It allowed socially conscious citizens to feel like they had an impact.

While it was fun, and my roomates and I continue to hang out by candle light for amusement purposes, I can't help but feel that the whole event was a bit pointless. Those who care about the environment participated, those who don't care didn't participate.

Earth Hour was more a statement of personal beliefs than a statement of societal, political, and economic change. Our society and economy is structured in a way that we will continue to degrade the environment. It makes me wonder, was it more symbolic that we turned off the lights for an hour, or more symbolic that we turned them back on for the remainder of the year?