We ate by candlelight last night, joining in with the millions who participated in Earth Hour. The little typists were keen, possessed with a sense of urgency. “We have to do this for the environment!”

I was glad to see their energy. I’ve been hanging out clothes, turning down the heat, flicking off lights, buying energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs, measuring kilowatt-hour usage, dumping second car, taking the bus and trying to reduce my carbon shoe size since the Kyoto Protocol.

I picked up many of these habits while living in Europe. But since returning to Canada I learned to keep my Kyoto habit in the closet. I’ve been overly sensitive to WTF looks and sneers. “You. Hang. Out. Clothes? You. Take. The. Bus? Weird.”

Strange how “normal” elsewhere is bizarre here. Even stranger because I used to think of Canada as such a environmentally aware country.

I still have a way to go. March trips south. Car ownership. Yesterday I bought snow peas from Guatemala.

I am convinced the world will reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, but it won’t be because of Earth Hour or environmental concerns. It will be due to the laws of supply and demand.

One of these days, it will be declared that we’ve reach the dreaded peak. And then stand by for the $200 per barrel of oil and the $300 per barrel.

It was only four years ago that I read a report from a credible oil and gas think tank predicting the $100-barrel of oil. It seemed impossible at the time, like some futuristic dystopia. The think tank predicted it would take 10 years to reach this point.

I’m not an armageddonist. There’s lots of sunshine, wind, tides, waves and geothermal energy supplies. (But not biofuels – they do more damage than good.)But that will take a massive shift in attitude and investment into innovation. You’re seeing this in Germany right now with massive investments into alternative energy R&D.

In my little neck of the woods, the visionless, small-minded politicians are talking about increasing the number of bridges and expanding road infrastructure to get more cars on an already crowded finite little peninsula on which my city is built.

They want to build a fossil-fuel dependent Atlantic Gateway mega-port to receive goods shipped from China – the long way round – and then truck and railroad them to Wal Marts in middle America. The myopia defies logic and beggars belief.

But Earth Hour is a good idea despite these people and because of them. Its aim is to  get people thinking differently and maybe changing some of their habits. It’s a bottom-up movement.

It’s a good idea to do this voluntarily before we are forced to do it.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under Canada, environment, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.