Earth Hour Daily

I wasn't exactly paying attention to news stories on Earth Hour on Saturday and Sunday, preferring to watch ants dismantle a cockroach in a dark corner of the kitchen, but did I really hear a news reader say that the original idea was to get 'Earth Hour' to become a daily event, and that was still on the cards?

An hour each day when all the lights at home, or in the office, are switched off. Perhaps compulsory? A fine arriving in the mail because the monitoring of your electricity usage shows no drop during the daily scheduled 'Earth Hour', meaning you have broken international carbon control laws?

I must be getting old, but having the lights off at home when there wasn't blinding sunlight, or when it wasn't the middle of the night, wasn't called Earth Hour when I was a kid. It was called "a blackout."

Of course, governments having a free hand to introduce compulsory 'Earth Hour' blackouts will be a great way for unprepared electricity suppliers and the responsible government departments to gloss over their failure to deliver 24 hours a day energy to the home at a reasonable price.

When power shortages start hitting the grid in a very noticeable way, they can make 'Earth Hour' a mandatory daily event.

"Blackout? Whaddayamean 'blackout'? This isn't a blackout. It's Earth Hour."

By then it will probably be called something else, like 'The No Power Hour.'

UPDATE : Apparently, the participation in Earth Hour across Australia was equivalent to the shutting down of two major power stations. Temporarily.