earth hour

Apparently Vegas dimmed its lights Saturday for Earth hour. Dimmed is what the paper said. One cannot expect Las Vegas to go dark. Although some notorious items apparently did go without illumination. For one hour the sign, "Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas" was dark. And so were the Luxor's space beams. How is that for progress?

The soon to be renamed Sears Tower, the Golden Gate bridge, the Sydney opera house, the Eiffel Tower, all these landmarks went dark and stayed dark for one full hour.

I hope you didn't feel the urge to pull out the good-old SUV from your garage to go and watch it happen. Or that you were one of the guests at the Bank of America tower drinking cocktails with battery-operated "ice" cubes, served by waiters who carried flash lights and wore battery operated head lights? Because if you did that, it pretty much defeated the purpose.

Then again, millions of people no doubt turned on their TV sets to watch these famous landmarks go dark. Courtesy of hundreds of TV camera crews, who pulled out all the stops to capture the scenes. Never mind the miles driven, the generators that ran, and the elaborate energy wasting toys that were needed to ensure we could all witness this historic event in real time.

I have an idea. Why don't we turn off all those lights every single night? And then once a year, we can celebrate earth hour and turn everything on for 60 minutes. How is that for a nice twist? WWF where are you?