Earth Hour?  Render unto me a fucking break, already.

Ever since Al Gore told us that we’re ruining the world, motherfuckers have been scrambling to find ways to reduce their carbon footprint and save the planet. And thus Earth Hour, the stupidest hour known to humankind was born.

First, let me say that I’m all for saving the planet. I live on the planet, so yeah, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t come over and leave your cigarette butts and shit all over the place.

And I’ll have you know that I have made a lot of sacrifices in the name of saving the planet.

I love aerosol deodorant (It’s so cold when it hits your armpit!  I love that!), but I haven’t used it since the late 80s because Greenpeace told me that every time I do, an angel loses its wings.

I love drinking beer out of a can, but now I buy it by the case, instead of buying it by the six pack because every time you drink a six pack of beer, a bunch of seagulls and fish choke to death.

So don’t you dare say that this here Angry Black Lady doesn’t love the environment.  Because she does. 
T    H    I    S    much.

But Earth Hour?  Seriously, people?

Earth Hour is the brain child of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.   Back in 2007, 2.2 million residents of Sydney, Australia turned off all “non-essential” lights to raise awareness of whatever the fuck happens when people can’t see where they are going.

This past Saturday, more than 1000 cities in over 80 countries celebrated Earth Hour; homes, office buildings, landmarks, shacks, shanties, underground lairs, and pies in the sky turned off their lights for an hour at 8:30 PM (local).  Major landmarks turned their lights out, you guys!  This is, like, totally a big deal!

Um, no it’s not.

OK first, fools did this at local time?  Wouldn’t it have been more meaningful if all countries did it at the same time?  And by “meaningful” I mean if aliens were looking down from outerspace, wouldn’t they be all like “ooooh… it’s sort of dark down there?”, and wouldn’t that mean something?  I don’t know if the geniuses who came up with Earth Hour know about time zones and the international date line and whatnot, but our alien (soon-to-be) overlords certainly do.  So let’s get it together, earthlings.

Second, what the hell are “non-essential” lights?  I’m currently sitting in the dark with nothing but the warm glow of my 52 inch television and my MacBook.  Both of these items are essential, to me, in my opinion.  I’m not sure if they qualify as “lights.”  I’ll turn my goddamn bathroom light off if it’ll make Al Gore get off my back already.

Third, the do-gooders over at Earth Hour suggested that those participating in this Yay Look at Me, I’m Doing Something to Save the World nonsense broadcast to the world the sheer awesomeness of turning off a couple lights for an hour:

PHOTO

Take a photo on the night, upload it to flickr and add it to Earth Hour’s flickr group and tag it with your city and country.

VIDEO

Make a video of your event, upload it to YouTube and add it to our YouTube group.

BLOG

Write a live blog post during the event and tag it with earthhour or voteearth, and your location.

TWITTER

Update your Twitter on the night and write #earthhour or #voteearth and your #location in your update to tag it.

Seriously?  Are they kidding?

Sadly, the answer is no.  I saw motherfuckers on Facebook bragging about how they were “turning off their lights to celebrate Earth Hour” (presumably after having charged up their smartphones, brain zip drives, eye chips, and pocket computers so that they would be able to keep themselves occupied during the Most Boring Hour Ever by updating their Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace pages.)  So if I turn off all my lights, but update my Facebook page for an hour, does that count as reducing my carbon foot print?  What if I update my Facebook page on my iPhone instead of my computer?  Give me a fucking break.  If you’re on Facebook talking about how you’re “saving the planet because you’re Facebooking in the dark” then you need to get right over yourself.

Finally, by the looks of it, Earth Hour was pretty lame.

The Aussies, didn’t do much besides turn off those bright fucking lights on the Sydney Opera House:

Thanks a lot, Australia.  You’re the ones who got us into the mess what with having no ozone layer and being (as the great Dylan Moran points out) only a half mile away from the sun.

Those sodding Brits scored some big points when they turned off all the goddamn lights in Parliament:

But considering that the Parliament building is practically made of fucking lights, I’m not impressed.

Italy did its part for the environment by turning the lights off in 3 of the 4 tiers of the Colosseum, but then felt the need to turn up the light in whatever the hell that structure is to the lower right of the picture.

Hey you!  Turn off that light!  It’s fucking distracting!  You’re fucking amateur!

Las Vegas was kind of a douche about it, and left a big gold hotel all ablaze during Earth Hour:

When asked to comment, Las Vegas said “I’m the fucking City of Lights.  What did you expect?”

After using all the electrical and nuclear power capability in China, Beijing turned this fucking thing on:

and then promptly turned the fucking thing off before high-fiving itself for saving the planet:

Athens didn’t really do much but turn off the Acropolis lights:

Thanks, Greece.

The Eiffel Tower turned its lights off,

while the rest of Paris turned their lights on to try and figure out why the fuck the Eiffel Tower wasn’t all lit up to high heaven.

Bangkok Thailand turned off, like, five lights:

LA Live, the new monstrosity in downtown Los Angeles simply refocused its lights over the obscenely large television and the morons who clamored to the front of the crowd just so they could get a glimpse of themselves on TV:

I don’t even know what the fuck this thing in Stockholm is:

But somehow Sweden made it disappear:

(Figures Sweden would get it right–what with their first rate public education system, universal healthcare, low infant mortality rate, and delicious pancakes.)

Listen up, world.  Instead of engaging in meaningless symbolic acts that will allow you to feel better about  sucking all the energy out of the universe on every hour of every other day, how about just turning off one light in your house, or replacing a couple 60 watt bulbs with fluorescent bulbs?  Or how about just using fewer lights in your house every day?

Now excuse me, I’m going to go take a nap celebrate Earth Hour for a while.

[images via boston.com]

Tags: Al Gore, Angry Black Lady, Earth Hour, environmental activism, stopthemadness

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 8:30 PM and is filed under Angry Black Lady Chronicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.