Sometimes we need to criticize that which has the best intentions, as we see the worst results. Last week, the world (well 88 countries, at least) turned off its lights… for an hour… sending us into a dark age of social consciousness.

The World Wildlife Fund asked citizens of the world to “vote for the earth” last Saturday by flipping their switches between 8:30pm and 9:30pm. It was a symbolic call to action and awareness campaign for global warming. A global unification of citizenry united in their concern for rising temperatures and environmental catastrophe. It was a way for us all to “do our bit” in the fight to save our planet.

It was a farce. A sad aggrandisement of mob mentality. A campaign built on the premise that “that every bit helps”; on the flowery notion that a billion people turning off their lights has more significance than simple symbolism. A campaign grossly disproportionate to the scale of the problem.

Surely we are further down the line with global warming than this? Surely by now, after over a decade of awareness campaigns and activism, we can do better than an hour of blackout a year? Even HIV/Aids had its red ribbon comparatively quicker.

So, what did Earth Hour really do? And most importantly, what didn’t it do?

There are two ways to view Earth Hour. Firstly, that it is about the electricity consumption lowered by the initiative. Secondly, that it is simply about creating awareness (the view held by the organisers, but not necessarily by the ill-informed public). Awareness is two fold: awareness of the individual’s role in saving the planet, and, more importantly, showing governments that its voting public is seriously displeased and if they wish to remain in power, they need to respond.

The first view is of course preposterous (though many who were eagerly sitting in the dark for an hour last week, were also in the dark of this fact).

The impact of Earth Hour is staggeringly low, less than negligible. Consumption dropped in the hour by between less than 1% and up to 15.1% in Toronto. Even when viewed over a day, the impact is hardly measurable – akin to placing a plaster on a self-emolliating monk.

Most who flipped the switch, of course never believed that it was really about the consumption of energy. But there were many (a surprisingly high percentage of the people I spoke to) who genuinely believed that turning off the lights for an hour had a direct positive impact on the earth’s environment – admittedly these were generally the same people who packed the family into the SUV with their ready-packaged picnics to drive miles to a vantage point to witness the blackout spectacle.

This shows a gross lack of understanding of the issue. A lack of understanding propelled by knowledge-less campaigns such as Earth Hour. The real danger here is, of course, that many adherents of the blackout believe they have “done their bit” and will continue to live the same wasteful lifestyles they have been until they smugly flip the switch next year.

The reality is that the world emits around 27 billion tons of CO2 each year, through transportation, electricity use and deforestation. When one considers that the average gas-guzzling American contributes only 20 tons to this (which is on average five times more than anyone else, 10 times more than the average Chinese, and nearly 20 times more than the average Indian), one quickly realises that the problem may be beyond the scope of the individual, even if we stopped breathing (a step too far for even the hardiest activist). Of course this doesn’t mean we should simply do nothing and every energy saving light bulb, over time, will make an impact. But we certainly need a far more radical approach than the superficiality of Earth Hour. We need to be given the facts, so we can all contribute to a significant change.

Take a look at our buying habits, for example. Our attitude to food consumption alone is staggering, as we continue to shop at supermarkets instead of at stores offering locally grown produce. A great deal of energy goes into producing, packaging, shipping, storing, and cooking just a single meal (nearly 21 percent of the fossil energy we use goes into the global food system). One tomato can travel over 1,500 miles to end up in the produce aisle at your nearest grocery store, while a locally sourced tomato, on average only 60 miles. It takes about 7.3 units of (primarily) fossil energy to produce one unit of food energy in the U.S. food system.

Yet, our ignorance is even greater than this. Did you know, for example, that producing just one bottle of water requires between “5.2 and 10.2 million joules of energy per litre – 2,000 times the energy needed to produce tap water? The numbers are even more disturbing on a large scale. US consumers bought over 33 billion litres of bottled water in 2007, requiring 32-53 million barrels of oil, or one-third of one percent of total US energy consumption.” That’s a lot of oil wasted on what we can get out of the tap.

So, reduced consumption is clearly not a reason to “vote for Earth”. Which means, it must be about awareness. Yet the awareness created was hollow.

The point of Earth Hour, according to organisers, was “to send a powerful message from everyone to the world that reducing energy use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is important”. Even the organisers acknowledged the limitations of a one-hour annual event. But they argued the event’s worldwide popularity could influence governments to sign a new international accord on carbon emissions at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

This makes Earth Hour a political campaign – which is what it should be, but certainly not as it is billed. And it is as a political message that Earth Hour fails most significantly. Solidarity alone does not change political opinion. One billion people turning off their lights for an hour would have the same effect as two billion turning off their lights. Politics is blind to passivity.

History has proven time and again (just think of any colonised nation, or the existence of unions) that politicians are only swayed by calls to action with measurable financial impact. One billion people doing nothing (which is what we have already established happens with Earth Hour), but saying just how unhappy they are while they are doing nothing, just doesn’t create or change policy. Our leaders are well aware of the problem, which is why they are engaging in talks in Copenhagen, which is why Kyoto exists. Which is why Earth Hour is a useless political message to create awareness.

The only way to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is an international regime that puts a cap and a price on climate pollution. For primarily industry, with influence from the consumer, to change the manner in which it sees business and how it views profit. The only way that will happen is if politicians around the world agree on the severity of global warming (which is an issue propelled by science and the scientific community) and to then enforce caps and penalties.

Climate change is no longer the new kid on the awareness block. You don’t get kudos anymore for using energy saving bulbs or recycling, that is expected. Global warming is a part of our lives, and yet we sense the futility of our efforts. We risk green fatigue because, after all, what can we do about it? Yet, real action is beneficial. We are developing clean energy sources and methods of decarbonising the atmosphere. For this to maintain momentum, we need to keep climate change near the top of our political agenda and to keep it at the top of the political agenda we need to DO SOMETHING and not do something that makes us all think we are doing something.

The message should not be to turn our lights out, but to manage the wonder of electricity better.  As Goethe said in 1825: “Electricity is the pervading element that accompanies all material existence, even the atmospheric. It is to be thought of unabashedly as the soul of the world.” This is not something we simply turn off in protest, especially when turning it off is solely symbolic.

I say boycott Earth Hour next year by creating awareness of the facts. By showing people that blindly aligning themselves with initiatives simply because they are “green” is not an intelligent solution to the problem. People telling you to “do your bit” in the energy-sapping online environment (such as through twee Facebook statuses) without truly understanding the issue is counterproductive. If we keep preaching to the converted and saying “anything is better than nothing”, then the lights are going to go out a lot quicker.