I’ve heard a lot over the past two days about Earth Hour and how everyone should participate. Sorry, but I think Earth Hour is just plain stupid. All the hype shows everyone going to parties and burning candles right? Well, let’s take a look at how that helps the environment:

• Did they drive their fossil burning car to the party?
• How about those candles. A 7W CFL bulb produces around 7 grams of CO2. One small candle produces about the same amount of CO2. But get this, you would need to burn 40 candles to get the same light as that 7W CFL bulb — now you are producing 480 grams of CO2!
• Did they buy their food for the party from a local, organic farmer or was it shipped half way around the planet we are trying to save.

I think much of the strategies used by the environmental movement are faulty. Another pet peeve of mine is the massive amount of advertising dollars spent on recycling. My kids are convinced, from advertising and school, that as long as you recycle you are doing good. That is misleading. So excessive packaging is fine as long as we recycle it? No way. Recycling costs money and uses energy. I tell my kids there is a reason the order is reduce, then reuse then last (but definitely not least in today’s society) recycle.

And another one, how about the push to produce an electric automobile. I can’t even turn on my lights and you want me to use electricity to run my car?

So my suggestion is use the same publicity to ask people to make a meaningful change. Let’s encourage manufacturers to make a CFL bulb that is more energy efficient AND brighter AND cheaper. Then on Earth Day we can all change one bulb over because we will want to change to a better product.

As for me, I am going to be starting some lettuce indoors, under my grow lights which are already on for some other seeds I have started. Then I will be able to eat food I grew in my own back yard, without pesticides, that did not burn any fossil fuels to get to my table. And yes, I use energy efficient grow lights, because I do want to make a difference.