We Wel­ling­tonis­tas have been strong sup­port­ers of Earth Hour in the past, and even though Keith Ng gave it a damned good fisk­ing over on Pub­lic Address, we’re still behind the concept. And so, it seems, are a lot of loc­al bars and res­taur­ants, with Wel­ling­tonista favour­ites Fidels, Sweet Mother’s Kit­chen, the South­ern Cross, Caffe
Itali­ano and Trade Kit­chen among the many places offer­ing can­delit din­ners on Sat­urday night. We just hope it does­n’t make those poor, fra­gile roller girls crash into one anoth­er*.

Keith’s right that the actu­al energy saved in an hour will be min­im­al, and the powers (no pun inten­ded) that be are unlikely to be swayed by the sym­bol­ism, but that need­n’t make it an empty ges­ture. If it helps a few people under­stand the impact of their decisions, and look for prac­tic­al options to save energy in the long term, then it will do some good. Keith points out that switch­ing to low-energy light bulbs is, for most applic­a­tions, a simple and sens­ible thing to do right now. So it’s just as well that as part of the Earth Hour pro­mo­tion, Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rary is giv­ing away free CFL bulbs until Sat­urday.

[*not really]