Lights Out for Candle Night
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.19.07
For optimists, the winter solstice is a major happy holiday; every day from now on is a little bit longer as we climb out of the darkness toward spring. For years in Toronto we have celebrated it with the Kensington Market Festival of Lights; now the Japanese Candle Night, celebrated during the summer solstice, has been extended to the winter where it makes a lot more sense.
So turn off the lights and light candles on December 22 from 8:00 PM till 10:00 PM.
Do something special . . .
Read a book with your child by candlelight.
Enjoy a quiet dinner with a special person.
This night can mean many things for many people.
A time to save energy, to think about peace,
to think about people in distant lands
who share our planet.
Pulling the plug open the window to a new world.
Awakens as to human freedom and diversity.
It is a process of discovery about our potential.
However you spend them, for just tow hours, join us.
Turning off the lights, and help us spread
a gentle wave of candlelight around the earth.
On the evening of the winter solstice,
from 8 to 10 p.m.
Turn off your lights, and take it slow.
It can be a group event; you can register on the Candle Night website. So far only one North American group has signed on, in Sewanee, Tennessee.
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On the face of it this sounds like a good idea (environmentally), but looking deeper this might put more CO2 into the atmosphere. I don't have time to run the numbers, but turning off a few hundred watts of incandescent lights for a few hours might not make up for lighting a dozen candles, per household. The numbers would be even worse for households that had already switched to CFLs or LEDs.
If we've come to the point where we need to calculate the CO2 emissions generated by burning a candle for a couple hours, it's time to end it all. Life is no longer worth living.