Earth Hour is an exercise in feel-good hypocrisy

Is there anything more useless than Earth Hour? I know Vancouver is pretending to be the Greenest Metropolis in the known universe, or whatever, and that some British Columbians may wish to burn me at the stake with biofuel or hemp straw for spouting such heresy, but what exactly is the point of this ridiculous annual exercise in green guilt?

B.C. Hydro reported that more British Columbians turned off the lights for Earth Hour this past Saturday night compared to 2015. (2016 wasn’t a good comparison because the time change last year made for a bad example.) Electricity use dipped 24 megawatt hours Saturday night, compared to a drop of 15 megawatt hours two years ago.

“The idea is to get people thinking about power conservation,” B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Mora Scott told Postmedia reporter Cheryl Chan about Earth Hour, which is supposed “to raise awareness about climate change.” Yeah, like that requires more promotion.

Hydro said that the energy savings Saturday night was the equivalent of turning off 1.1 million LED bulbs, which sounds impressive until you read the actual drop in B.C. electricity use during the event. It fell by 0.3 per cent. (Does anyone else hear the sound of crickets?)

Many Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland residents like to pretend they are the greenest in the land, but the Earth Hour numbers tell a different story. Lower Mainland electricity use only dropped 0.4 per cent. The drop was just 0.2 per cent on Vancouver Island.

The biggest drop in energy use was in the southern Interior, where power use fell by 1.7 per cent. (Who’s greenest now, Vancouver? I also couldn’t help but notice that electricity use during Earth Hour in grubby old Toronto, home to all those nature-exploiting captains of industry, fell by 2.8 per cent — seven times the Lower Mainland’s efforts. It fell 3.2 per cent in 2016.)

Power use rose 0.4 per cent in the Northern Interior — perhaps a bit of the middle finger from our friends up north who’ve had enough of urban eco-sophisticates in the south trying to kill every job-creating energy project in their region.

Whatever the reason, the almost total lack of interest by British Columbians shows that Earth Hour is a failure.

There is nothing wrong with not wasting energy. I’m considered an irritant by my family because I go around turning off lights that others insist should be on even when they are not in a room. And I’m all for improved energy efficiency in appliances, turning down the thermostat and better insulation in homes.

But I draw the line at sitting around in the dark on a Saturday night to make a point that isn’t all that clear.

The problem with Earth Hour, which began in Australia in 2007, is that, ultimately, it’s hypocritical.

Governments around the world turn off the lights on various famous structures, from the Acropolis in Athens and the Kremlin in Moscow to the Sydney Opera House and our very own Lions Gate Bridge — for an hour. The rest of the nights of the year, the thousands of unnecessary lights on those structures blaze away.

If the powers-that-be really wanted to save energy and — if you believe their rhetoric — the planet, why aren’t they permanently turning off all those useless, although pretty, lights? That would make more sense than asking regular people to sit around in the dark for an hour once a year. It makes me wonder if most of the tiny drop in energy use during Earth Hour is from governments and large companies turning off the lights on public structures.

Then there is the question of the point of it all. I suppose in places where they burn coal to generate electricity, using less power reduces the production of CO2, which many scientists say contributes to climate change. But that’s not the case in B.C., where we are fortunate to have large hydroelectric dams cranking out the greenest, least-polluting power in the world.

Again, this shows how bogus Earth Hour, like so many other feel-good environmental initiatives, really is. Does anyone believe that sitting around in the dark by a fireplace like early humans, living as if wonderful, clean electricity hadn’t been invented, is preferable to civilized, modern life?

Earth Hour is an exercise in hypocrisy, futility and stupidity. If you want to save electricity, buy a new fridge.