Earth hour, my hour

I came across this excellent feature, thanks to its posting on Kedu's blog (dont miss the video). Named Earth Hour - it was a call to Sydneyites to express their commitment towards reducing global warming.

Essentially, on March 30th from 7:30 to 8:30, more than 2 million residents in Sydney, Australia turned off their lights and appliances responding to a call for Earth Hour. As per Energy Australia, this dropped the energy consumption for the Sydney area by 10.2%.

Unfortunately, I wasn't part of it. However, it did set me thinking. Thinking on different lines than the quest to reduce global warming. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize an hour late in the evening in darkness. No lights, no TV, no music, no cranking from the dishwashers or the washing machines. No screeching from the elevators. I almost started hearing the sounds of a cricket chirping, or biased by the climatic zone I am in, a frog croaking. As I write, I realize that I haven't heard these sounds for quite some time now. Our lives today are mostly drowned either by the sounds of commute or iPods blaring into our ears or the television ignorantly running in the background. We long for a quiet walk or to plan a camping trip into the serene wilderness. We jump at the first opportunity to take a ride through the countryside. We pine for a dark star-lit sky, devoid of any light pollution that the progressive metros inflict.

I eagerly await that one hour of darkness to reach Vancouver. While it will go a long way in contributing to the ever affectionate and forgiving mother earth, it will give us frantic racers time to slow down, sit with ourselves, introspect and help us see things in the light of darkness. At the very least, it will allow us to tune into the clock of nature and may set us to ponder that after all, each evening, the sun does go down for a reason.