I keep three stacks of one-litre yogourt containers under my kitchen sink.

They are there because I don’t know what else to do with them.

The plastic is No.5 and that is not recyclable in my city, but I can’t bring myself to throw them out.

All I can see is landfill sites filling up with yogourt containers, millions and millions of them.

Then I see wildfires, droughts and melting Arctic ice floes.

So the yogourt containers sit under my sink, awaiting a purpose.

What you do with with non-recyclable yogourt containers?

We lit the candles, put a fire on and got the blankets from the trunk downstairs.

For the first half hour we sat in soft glow of the flickering light. We looked out the window to see if anyone else was doing the same. A few were.

And then we fell asleep – three of us head-to-shoulder on the couch, one in the chair.

When we woke up it was almost 10. Earth Hour was over.

So tell me, is it really observing Earth Hour if you’re asleep?

Do you think we were cheating?

PTD. And I need meds.

Living in this little finger stuck off the Eastern seaboard of the North American continent, we catch the remnants of these terrible hurricanes that are pummelling the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and southern USA.

Since the beginning of August we’ve been in the swirl of one blown-out hurricane after another.

Torrential downpours, wind and greyness.

Today Post-Tropical Storm Hanna with bring rain and winds. And more grey.

That’s what’s killing me. The greyness.

I need to photosynthesize.

I need Sunzac, Sunloft, Sunban.

Give. Me. Sun.

Back then, the issues were pollution, extinction of wildlife, construction of freeways and dumping raw sewage into the ocean. Today the issues are more focused on global warming and clean energy.

Days like Earth Day do create awareness and momentum but political leaders are the “deaf, dumb and blind kids” of the environmental movement. (Canada just cut its environment department budget by $50M. Ah, leadership!)

Neither Earth Day nor our visionless political leaders will stop our hyper-consumption and oil-guzzling ways. That will happen when the supply of oil declines.

Just last week I read that the CEO of Total - one of the biggest oil companies in the world – is worried that global supply of oil is not keeping up with global demand. Think tanks have predicted that this scenario will result in rising fuel prices and food prices.

Hmmmm. This is happening now all over the world right now, isn’t it?

Me? I hang out my clothes, turn off the heat, click off lights, stay away from malls and take the bus.

I like doing this stuff but I don’t think it makes much difference. I think the laws of supply and demand will rule the day and achieve some of the goals of Earth Day.

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.