Hour of gesture

Central Sydney fails to dim in any meaningful way

While the Muftim cheers on his followers in their collective act of rugged individualism, here in Melbourne’s South Eastern Growth Corridor I’ve been trying to hear myself think — above the unremitting roar and hoonery of traffic from the nearby arterial — about the symbolism and efficacy of tonight’s Earth Hour.

Neighbours up the street have coloured lights blazing all around the front of their house... and they have a bunch of young kids whose future is supposedly at stake!

Streetlights burn imperturbably, neon shopfronts bathe their surrounds in solicitous illumination, while yonder the local railway station remains floodlit, presumably as a concession to concerns that customers may stumble blindly off the platform into the path of scheduled trains, running as usual powered by coal-fired electricity.

The futility of the gesture is as much a collective wank as the Muftim’s vaunted ‘hour of power’. Seeing as there’s a widely agreed problem, perhaps folks should be burning the midnight oil writing letters to the papers or their MPs — at least, doing something useful given the privilege of the ability to banish darkness.