An un-Earthy Hour
Toronto Mayor David Miller has made many Torontonians look like fools. During Saturday's much-hyped Earth Hour, the city's "Green Mayor" was not going about his business in the dark as he had admonished others to do for the sake of the planet. Instead, Mr. Miller turned off the lights at City Hall, hopped into a car, drove off to a well-lit drugstore and then to a friend's bar mitzvah, which one assumes took place in full artificial light.
A surprised Toronto resident saw him at the drugstore and reported the news to our paper. We were surprised, too, by the Mayor's nonchalant attitude toward an event he repeatedly said was important to him, and thus should be to others as well. In an Earth Hour ad available on You-Tube, Mr. Miller sits in the dim light of a fireplace and urges, "On March 29, at 8 p.m. for one hour, I encourage you to switch off all non-essential lighting." He goes on to reproach a man who planned to spend Earth Hour blinking in the dazzle of a brightly lit fete: "Your actions will count. So join me in the dark."
We can only guess that what the Toronto Mayor really meant to say was that regular folk should sit in the dark, rather than busy and important people like him.
If Mr. Miller truly believed that spending Earth Hour in the shadows does "count," then he should have stayed in the dark as promised. Instead, he went about his business quite normally, secure in the knowledge that he had done his bit by patronizingly imploring the rest of us to turn out the lights.
One city councillor defended Mr. Miller, saying that the Mayor has a smaller carbon footprint than most people in Toronto and he should be cut some slack. But that is not a measure of a good politician. We'd suggest candour and sincerity remain better ways to judge an individual than measuring his carbon emissions. And on this matter, David Miller does not measure up.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
1 comment:
I don't give a shit. Really. Again, you have shown you just don't get it.
Since then, my earth hour has continued, I just switched my business downtown to a power company that sources gren power, ie: wind power. I will be doing the same with my house. I've also taken a number of other steps to reduce my consumption. As have a lot of my friends.
Earth hour was symbolic.
So what did you do, other than continual bitching?
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