Earth Hour; sign up with your commitment to turn off all the lights in your house for one whole hour tonight. Convince your friends and family to do so as well.

Just the lights; you can leave the TV on, burn oil to heat your house, and use paraffin candles and flashlights to get around. Heck, just don’t leave your broadband equipped wireless laptop, and hang out in the Earth Hour forums, or blog your feelings and pictures that you take for the event.

Congratulations, you’ve just made a difference!

Well, maybe in how you feel about how much you’re doing to reduce your impact on the planet. Feel better? Great, but you haven’t done anything tangible other than pat each other on the back and tell yourselves how conscientious and good you are.

You’ll attend the big concert downtown to increase awareness about Earth Hour, and you’ll drive alone in your car there and back. Maybe you’ll stop at Tim Horton’s for a coffee in a disposable cup and some preprocessed food that is shipped from 2000 miles away where it’s mass produced in a factory and sealed in plastic.

Congratulations on making a difference.

If you haven’t already signed up for Earth Hour, please sign up today! If you are planning on participating but have not yet signed up at earthhour.org, please do so now. By signing up, you are sending a strong message to our government, and governments around the world, that Canadians want to take action on climate change.

1. Sign up at earthhour.org


2. Turn off your lights on March 29 at 8 p.m.


3. Encourage your friends, family and colleagues to participate. Check out a list of happenings across Canada.

Raising awareness is important, but actions speak louder than words. Park your car, learn to walk, buy from local farms when possible, and basically pay attention. Signing up to a group on Facebook is bullshit unless there is follow through. Turn off your lights and keep them off.

See if your municipality has grants to help you install a small wind turbine or solar collector or waste heat reclamation. Change to portable fluorescents, or LED lighting, and stop leaving the lights on in each of your 37 rooms in your too-big home. Move to a smaller house; do you really need 4 bathrooms for the 3 people who live in the house, and the living room, family room, den and games room? Reduce how much you consume across the board if you honestly want to make a difference.