We Love The Earth About As Much As We Love Our Mothers

We’re the society that shows our appreciation to our mothers by taking them out to breakfast one day a year, and then we make a big deal about it.  “Hey, Mom, I took you to a crowded restaurant on one of the busiest mornings of the year, and our food took over an hour to come out.  I love you!  Thanks for spending four grand on braces!”

So it’s not surprising that we’ve bought into this idea that turning our lights off for ONE HOUR a year is supposed to somehow heal the Earth.  “Hey, Earth, I turned my lights off for 60 minutes, but then I kept using all this other stuff that I charged while it was still ‘okay’ to be on the grid.  I love you!  Thanks for all the pretty polar bears and stuff.”

That’s the premise behind the latest feel good crock, Earth Hour.  Starting in Sindey (Australians are bigger hippies than a lot of you think) in 2007, self congratulating human beings decided that turning off the light switch for one hour would somehow heal the damage they say we’ve been doing for the other 8,759 hours a year.  (Unicorn Math is global now)

So what is Earth Hour?  It’s honestly hard to know.  Their own website is contrived and confusing and only seems to offer links to articles about people or countries participating in it.  There even seems to be a mantra:  “I will, if you will”, which sort of reminds one of when mothers would ask their children if they were going to jump off of  a bridge just because everyone else was doing it.  After spending 15 minutes on Earth Hour’s official website, the answer seems to be “yes”.

Watch the video below and see if you can make sense out of it.