My main criticism is EH’s lack of integration with the events or products it associates with. It’s a slick campaign, but there is substance missing, with the upshot being that EH simply gives it away .. serving as a ‘social conscience’ vehicle for its sponsors and allowing them to tick a few of those CSR boxes.

My first example: I experienced a profound sense of emptiness as I watched the Earth Hour promo this year, standing amongst the pizza boxes, tin cans and plastic bottles strewn all over the ground at the V-Festival in Sydney’s Centennial Park. The V-Festival was a zoo, and ultimately more about flogging mobile phones and expensive drinks than about the music, let alone ideas. As Cate Blanchett and Richard Branson did their earnest best on the giant video screens, all I could hear were people chucking their Breezer bottles into the bushes, and wondering aloud when the lights would be turned back on.

Secondly, the SMH’s promotion of EH is in many ways to be applauded. However, once again, the winner is the sponsor, and not EH’s objectives. A product such as the SMH that continues to deliver so much waste to the community (two Saturday ‘Drive’ sections, anyone?), and does idiotic things like put its newspapers into plastic bags for giveways at evening cinema events, simply mean that EH struggles to gain weight and credibility.

My usual philosophy is that doing something is better than nothing. So, if EH makes a few people reconsider their electricity consumption, and start looking at their light bulb purchases a bit differently, it will have been worth it, right? Hmm, not on this occasion.

Your version was more fun…

I think this is just plain snide commentary.

To paraphrase Darwin, in the end everything is marketing: in evolution’s case it is question of genetic material getting through to the next generation. In politics and public policy it’s a case of ensuring out global policy makers are aware that there will be consequences if they fail to act effectively on dangerous climate change. The eyes of the world are watching and time is precious. Earth Hour and its campaign is a good way to convey this message.

We can argue the toss regarding the best solutions (ETS, tax etc), and certainly there are major flaws in the Rudd/Wong model - which unfortunately has much in common with what we would have got under a Howard/Costello government. But these can be addressed

A good example was provided in Crikey itself the other day in its discussion of the dangers of methane, and it is arguable the proposed CPRS will fail to adequately deal with this dangerous emission. So we need to get the design of the scheme right.

I suggest Eleri would have been wiser to click through the piece and read the link to the New Scientist opinion by Professor Kirk Smith rather than take a cheap shot at WWF and Earth Hour.

It seems that alongside climate change skeptics we now have the fashionably cynical.

Crikey would better serve its subscribers by continuing to give them access to quality information. Here’s something much more interesting and valuable than cheap cynicism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MozcU7woNNQ&NR=1