We had a great evening - my son and I read to each other with a wind up flashlight, and the family sat around and reminisced about past power failures, and when various family members got electricity and TV.
I told the story about my late father coming home with my uncle Peter to discover this strange glow in the farmyard. He wanted to go back to town to get help, but uncle Peter explained that that was the new ‘yard light’ - they had just got electricity that day. My dad was eight years old at the time.
Yes, the actions of the day are largely symbolic, but in my opinion, it helps to get people to understand that we don’t need as much as we are taking. I think we should have an Earth Hour once a month, or once a week, so that as a society, we question our consumption of all resources. I think back to what my parents went through in WWII, and I don’t think our society is up to those kinds of challenges.