Sydney Blacks Out for Global Warming

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-aus/2007/mar/31/033106424.html

The Sydney Opera House's gleaming white-shelled roof was darkened Saturday night along with much of the rest of Australia's largest city, which switched off the lights to register concern about global warming.

The arch of Sydney's other iconic structure, the harbor bridge, was also blacked out, along with dozens of skyscrapers and countless homes in the 4 million-strong city, in an hour-long gesture organizers said they hoped would be adopted as an annual event by cities around the world.

Mayor Clover Moore, whose officials shut down all nonessential lights on city-owned buildings, said Sydney was "asking people to think about what action they can take to fight global warming."

Restaurants throughout the city held candlelit dinners, and families gathered in public places to take part in a countdown to lights out, sending up a cheer as lights started blinking off at 7:30 p.m.

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[orwell]

1. Cool...n/t

[Eclipsenow]

2. Not that dramatic where I was

I thought we'd end up having a street party!
My sister — not normally a raving greenie — hosted an "Earth hour" party.
I took "Crude Impact" DVD along, just in case she was shifting in her outlook.
No such luck. Kids had a good time though.

Anyway, the lights went of at 7:30 and then we went on a walk to check out how dark the local suburb was. Only about a third of the homes cared enough to turn the lights off, maybe less.

We met up with some other people doing the walk.
We talked about solutions to global warming.
The guy thought uranium would solve it all.
He thought I was mad when I suggested that IF we replaced all the world's coal and gas power plants with nuclear, Australia would only have enough good quality uranium to last 10 years and then we'd be into such dilute uranium that we'd burn so much fossil fuels gathering the stuff that the carbon benefits would be significantly negated, so why bother?

I tried to ask them to google peak oil — but I was already getting that glazed over eyes expression that suggested I was talking about Aliens at Area 51.

What is wrong with people? why can't they accept that, DER, if we burn all this stuff up one day it will run out, and hadn't we better plan for that and discuss it as a society before it happens, especially when a huge number of geologists are now sounding the alarm bells?

Maybe it hits a "fear" button that shoves the idea down into some deep, dark recess of denial.