Earth Hour '08 and random thoughts

I'm sure most people are probably aware of this, but Earth Hour '08 is this saturday, where we're supposed to turn of our lights "to make a statement about climate change". An article in Time recognizes that turning the lights off for one hour doesn't do much in terms of reducing carbon emissions, but that the purpose is to influence politics and that the language of politics is largely symbolic.

I understand all this, but I'm a bit confused by the argument because I don't know how turning off the lights for one hour is going to affect policymakers, or influence them to change policy. It's not a raucous movement that impedes social life or progress on a daily level (especially when hotels and other businesses are capitalizing on this with moonlight specials) nor will it flood mailboxes.

To me, it makes more of a statement that we, the public are aware of global warming and that it is an issue that we're concerned about. Nothing much beyond that. What are we demanding here? What do we want when we all turn of our lights for one hour? I think that in order for this to be more effective, that needs to be me made much more clear because right now, it's just saying that we're aware and that we're willing to live without electricity for an hour. The demand for change (to go Obama on you) is implicit, when I think it needs to be explicit. Much more explicit. Policy makers, it seems, historically have not often responded to implicit demands from the people they're supposed to represent. I'm not entirely convinced that the language of politics is purely symbolism, particularly when it comes to global warming. it's a problem that politics, at least US politics, has denied the existence of for so long, that reliance on symbolism seems to be a naive and extremely slow-moving process that is overly dependent upon the ability of policymakers to be more action-oriented than they have been in the last 50 years.

Nonetheless, I will be joining the rest of the world in darkness at 8pm tomorrow.

here's the time article if you're interested: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1725947,00.html?cnn=yes