Those who participate in the Earth Hour switch-off of electricity are enormously well-intentioned and may, indeed, see the future clearer than do we. Perhaps they anticipate how the practice of turning off power when you would normally be using it helps address global warming. Everybody understands turning off the lights and other electrical equipment when they’re not needed. But as a vision of how we address global warming, Earth Hour, even as a purely symbolic act, raises questions. The population of the world is exploding. There are said to be 130 million babies born per year. It’s easy to see what this means for electrical demand. Furthermore, this growth in population is fuelled by biological, religious and in some cases state imperatives. The process is irreversible. Again, we don’t pretend to know much about the science of global warming. Earth Hour may in fact achieve concrete psychological progress toward control of warming. But we would be foolish not to understand that in the end, the world is not going to turn off the lights. Even as they sat in the darkness Saturday, many people will have been texting electrical messages to each other. Power demand is insidious. Our salvation, if it may be called that, lies perhaps in the work which is on-going to find cleaner and more efficient means of creating power.