Our Hour

This year, Earth Hour dropped right in the middle of our big night out. We read our menus by candlelight, picked through our meals in the dark, and for all of our careful planning, arrived at the theatre to learn that the second show would be starting twenty minutes later that night. Certainly the restaurants had stocked up on the candles, and we caught the neighbourhood candle parade moving south, but I really have to wonder, given that the city’s power usage dropped a mere 5% this year, if all those candles contributed more to global warming than we saved.

Even with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance, we didn’t think it smart to leave our children alone in a house full of candles, let alone tell them to turn off the computer and make their own fun. So, for this year’s Earth Hour, we gave them a pass and left on our date with the intention of at least keeping our carbon footprint as small as we could, for what little that did to offset the inconvenient truth of Rowan turning on every light in the house to scare off the drunks from down the street.

Photo by transp.