Earth Hour 2010 Began Today!

Down Under - Lights out! Uh, huh! The city that couldn’t even find Nemo with bow to stern power boats packed like sardines in their harbor, Sydney, Australia, blasted ferry horns to signal the start of “Earth Hour” today, an energy conservation awareness event taking place in some 4,000 cities in 125 countries. Sydney, famed for being the place people are most fond of emitting carbon footprints akin to a Sasquatch on steroids, had all of its office buildings go dark for an hour at 8:30 pm. Earth Hour is slated to make more than 1,200 landmarks go dark across the world, from Sydney’s iconic opera house to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and it will even be lights out at the new and improved Eiffel Tower (with no stinky French people) in Las Vegas, which tourists can see, provided they ever leave the casino.  In New York City, the witch from the Broadway musical “Wicked” is slated to come out of the theater to wave her wand, making Times Square go completely dark, and allowing tourists the opportunity to grope someone who’s not their date. Environmental groups believe it is a symbolic event and are encouraging individuals at home to go dark for an hour. Or, at the very least, consumers can take steps to conserve energy year round by replacing their incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. Just don’t throw them in a landfill when they burn out, because the children are the future, and the kids born in that neighborhood might end up coming out of the womb with gills.