Earth Hour

I was always a bit suspicious of Earth Hour. There's nothing wrong with symbolic actions, but people need to understand what they are doing is symbolic, not think they've done their bit to stop global warming by switching off the lights for an hour. I'm not sure a lot of Earth Hour participants get this.

Combined with a general suspicion of a the woofers (WWF) this lent some sympathy for the large proportion of the environment movement who have labled it a croc. When Crikey ran a piece showing how companies could get credit for being part of Earth Hour without actually doing anything (why are office lights on at 8pm on a Saturday anyway?) my suspicions deepened.

Nevertheless, I joined in last night, and realised there may be a quite unintentional benefit to the whole thing: It was really nice. Sitting around by candlelight chatting with friends is a pleasure not a chore.

This is a good thing on several levels:

* I subscribe to the view that pleasure is, of itself, a good thing. Sometimes negative factors outweigh the pleasure gained, but I'm not sure thats the case this time.
* An evening with friends unencumbered by TV is pretty much the textbook case of social capital building.
* If people are reminded how nice it can be to do without electricity for a while it may genuinely produce a change in behaviour, unlike a one off diet that just encourages people to splurge afterwards.

But I still think WWF needs to make companies do something meaningful to get credit for taking part.