The World Wildlife Fund has offered us yet another weapon to use in the battle against global warming. Entitled Earth Hour, the voluntary initiative urges people across the world to turn off their lights for one hour on March 28th, giving the action the unwieldy analogy of ‘Voting for Earth’ and not for its greedy, self-serving rival Global Warming.

Earth Hour is an apparent scale-back of a thing called Earth Day, which individuals clearly no longer have the time for. Instead of the strenuous activities of planting a tree, recycling paper at home, and teaching a child to conserve, WWF has read the commitment of the common person and simply asked us to keep our electrical addictions at bay for just an hour.

For all the encouraging literature on the Earth Hour Website, not a single statistic is given as to exactly how much energy we can hope to save, and whether or not it will make even a blip on nature’s radar screen. So, though this may seem like a cop-out, remember that these events aren’t really designed to ‘Save the Earth,’ as the old euphemism implies. The earth will likely live out its existence long after we’ve exterminated ourselves from its service. Earth Hour, like planned reforestation and recycling, are simply there to make us feel like we’re doing something so we can avoid a global panic at the truth that our species is doomed.