Spooky Earth Hour

So for weeks the school and newspapers had indoctrinated our children with the coming of Earth Hour: one hour on Saturday night (from 8pm) when all the lights would go out. Our 7 year old son was adamant: no torches, only candles.

Then at 8:02, he had the following conversation with his mother:

"With the lights out, I'm scared."

"It's OK I'm with you."

"This is all Kevin Rudd's fault." (FYI: the new Australian Prime Minister -- and a reasonable inference since he was credited with putting Australia back on the environmental path.)

"No, everyone thought this was a good idea."

"Who thought this would be a good idea?"

"Me, your father, everyone you know."

"I only thought this was a good idea because they said so at School. Can we have the torch?"

This was a big turnabout. He had been on about this for weeks. When it comes down to it, school kids (and probably all of us) can talk about all this stuff in the abstract but until they experience it, it is essentially meaningless. It just goes to show how far we have to go.

From my perspective, I was looking forward to getting the telescope out and looking at the unpolluted sky. Alas in Melbourne all we had a view of was the unpolluted clouds.