Turn Out the Lights. And Hand Me That Cocktail!
Okay, another of my favorite kind of Liberal activities. San Francisco, a place I’ve proudly called home for over 20 years, is hosting an event called Lights Out SF. Here’s the premise: on Saturday, October 20, 2007, you 1) switch at least one light bulb in your house to an energy-saving compact fluorescent, 2) you then turn out all lights in your house from 8 to 9PM. Oh, there’s lots more they suggest, but that’s the gist of it. And from what I’m hearing on the streets, this is going to be the party of the year. My friend Rob — he’s the guy with the million dollar Twin Peaks to Coit Tower panoramic view of San Francisco — said the other day: “Grab your cocktail shaker. We’re going to mix up Martinis on the deck and watch the lights go out across the City.
So does this make us bad? That we’re going to do our bit to save the earth by, essentially, drinking more cocktails?
You know, my twenties self would have been ready to tar and feather my older mortgage-bound self. But intervening years have disabused me of the notion that only giving away all my possessions, donning a hair shirt and opening a soup kitchen in Calcutta can save the world. Am I doing enough? Are Liberals who talk about the problems of the world doing enough? Of course not. If we were all doing enough, the earth would be healed, world poverty would be ended, AIDS would be cured and television would feature only channels hosting 24 hour adaptations of great classics of British literature. I now realize, we also serve who flip a switch and drink.
I can just imagine how this is going to play on Fox TV. “Those crazy San Francisco Liberals are switching out their lights for one night. But we’ve done the analysis and with all their latte-drinking and blogging, they use 3 times the Kilowatt hours per person than the average street person in Keokuk, Iowa.” I think that’s the yardstick they used to measure Al Gore, isn’t it, when they “exposed” that his large house, which includes his and Tipper’s offices, uses approximately 12 times more than his neighbor Cletus does in his double-wide down the road. (And Cletus is not even there at night. That’s when he hunts possum.)
I’m not going to let Al completely off the hook, but I’m giving him points for moving in the right direction. Snopes has a good analysis of this whole debate, including a statement from the Gores’ spokesman pointing to his purchases of green source energy and the currently ongoing installation of solar panels in his home. So Al, I wish you’d gotten your house in order, literally, before you hit Cannes, but I applaud the steps you are taking. Which are probably ten times more than Bush is doing out at his ranch.
Which brings me back to cocktails and lights out. Yeah, I’m going to do it. And you know what, I’m going to swap out more than just one regular bulb for a CFL. Take that, San Francisco bashers.
I tell you, I’m tired of the debate from the Right being, “That pitiful little gesture you’re making is hardly a drop in the bucket.” Hey, at least it’s something. Even if each of us only added a drop, it would add up to buckets and buckets. A journey starts with a single step.
Granted it’s not going to be an easy step for me. My British husband is always accusing me of leaving so many lights on that our house looks like the Blackpool Illuminations. (I don’t think you want to ask what that’s all about. Imagine a poor man’s Vegas in a grimy, run down Victorian seaside resort and you’ll be close.) Here’s my excuse: we have a funky Victorian and electrical sockets aren’t exactly in convenient places, coming in as an afterthought to the gaslamp era. So you turn out one light in a room and you stumble and fumble through the length of the room to get to the next room where you can turn on the next light. Yeah, I know, “Get a flashlight, Liberal.” And I’m working on it. Maybe one hour with the lights out will get me past that excuse. Worth a try.
All I ask is can we – Liberals, Conservatives, Left, Right, Middle of the Road — at least do some little thing? Then try to do a little bit more. Instead of running down anyone who does something but not enough? Or measuring what we’re doing versus what, in an ideal world, someone could possibly do.
And try to take San Francisco a little bit more seriously. Okay, we’re the City that started experimenting with turning dog poo into bio-fuel But you know, last I heard, the limited trial has been so successful, city officials believe they’ll be able to power all the city’s schools with dog poo within the next few years.
See, sometimes “Think Different” can add up to more than an Apple tagline.
Pass the Martinis. And turn out the lights.
your Origami reporter,
blue state cowgirl
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One Response to “Turn Out the Lights. And Hand Me That Cocktail!”
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September 21st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
You know what made me want to turn out my lights? Mythbusters. It wasn’t even a political thing, it was to save money. Mythbusters did a show where they measured different kinds of light bulbs because they wanted to see if you would actually save money by turning off a light when you leave a room. They found that it’s almost always going to save you money to turn off the lights. So I may not be doing it for “the environment” but if it saves me money…