An hour with the lights turned out to make a statement. I previously had joked about "blogging by candlelight" but was saved from that inconsistency by the Internet server packing up for an hour or so last night (I'd like to believe they'd turned it off, but such breakdowns are too frequent lately to believe that). So the Barfords bumped around the flat in the dark, trying not to make toast or turn the kettle on and struggling to read by candlelight. One of us went out for a walk. Out there you could see none of the neighbours bothered, or even noticed sitting there with their lights blazing in front of their plasma TVs and computers. I guess we'll not be hosting "World Environment Day" in the near future.
It is not as if there was no publicity. It seems that many of those with their lights on in Warsaw were making a self-centred statement that they could not care less. Very much the same I think as the antiquity collectors who refuse to recognise that indiscriminate collecting is a major cause of the looting of archaeological sites for saleable items. That they continue to collect in the same way as in the nineteenth century is also a powerful statement about their self-centred attitudes to the world around them.
I am betting that very few ACCG members over the Ocean had their lights off last night. The way they allow the finite and fragile archaeological resource to be gobbled up to feed their personal obsessions does not create the impression of them being particularly environment conscious. I could be wrong of course, after all, holding a piece of the past in your hand by candlelight (or better still, olive-oil-lamp-light) is indeed a way of "experiencing the past" as it was experienced by those for whom those objects were made.
Vignette: from Wikipedia.
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