Then: It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Now: It is better to embrace a prudent and sensible period of darkness than to increase the collective carbon footprint of the decadent, indulgent West. Did you know that America only has 2% of the world's population, yet uses 99% of all the energy and other resources? This is an outrage! Oh, and don't get me started on food! Greedy, fat Americans gorge themselves on a 6700 calorie diet of Cheetos and Pepsi bought at Wal-Mart while enlightened cultures in France, Sweden and Sub-Saharan Africa do just fine on a daily caloric intake of under 200 calories. Have you seen videos of Ethiopian village women? They are so slim and athletic compared to the hogs driving their disgusting asses around in huge carbon-belching SUV's listening to Rush Limbaugh and Toby Keith. I wish they were all dead! Damn those hateful monsters to HELL! Did you know that those teabagging protesters yelled out horrible racial slurs at black Congress people? They grabbed the Senator from Mississippi or Alabama, which ever state has the black ones, and they actually hanged him right there on the Capitol steps! It's true...I read it on Kos.

Anyway...there is so much more I could say about those horrible unpatriotic right-wing traitors but I have to go. There's a sale on organic bananas at the Co-Op. Ah, sustainable, fair-trade food and they're only 37 dollars a pound! Such a bargain for living green.

The merest point of Truth’s light in the darkest night is to be preferred to all the moral grayness of a fog-sodden day with no Virtue in it.

(Yes, I recycle my comments!)

Here's another salient verse about darkness v. light from the Most Intolerant Book Ever:

John 3:16-21

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

I hope these idiots stumble in the dark and hurt themselves.

JWM

I love that verse Jewel. Thanks.

And I've made a new graphic to reflect it too.

People ought to start putting up the John 3:19-21 signs without actually quoting those verses. Everyone, for the most part, knows John 3:16, but nothing follows in their worldview. What a very different perspective we get when we put the other verses after the 16th.

The green movement has become a cult of death.

Energy is life and wealth, wealth that allows Western society to prosper and to have a standard of living that beyond the beliefs and wildest dreams of our ancestors.

I have seen and lived in countries that live the green dream. Life is brutish, hard and nasty to all by the "wealthiest" who are the poorest of the poor by Western standards.

Unfortunately our wealth allows our society to support the costs of those fugheads who continue to undermine our wealth and prosperity from within.

We sow the whirlwind and we'll reap what we sow.

So... where is that? Michigan, right?

/sarcasm.

I think we'll be seeing controlled blackouts here by the by.

Easier to manage the population when they cannot communicate.

Our local.gov owned electrical utility (AKA our 'Power Authority') cuts out two or three times in a typical good month...Sometimes for hours at a time. We've been juiceless for as much as nine months after particularly bad hurricanes, but they've managed to whittle that down to three to fourteen days for lesser storms that don't splinter more than a few dozen poles. Progress...That is when they aren't providing their daily service of alternately surging and browning out the electron food supply of our plugable devices to the great benefit of consumer electronic vendors.

Consequently, generator food is nearly as important to keep on hand as people food.

Anyway, years ago -in a time as far away as Mars- I worked as a lighting 'dude' at our performing arts venue where -courtesy of our 'Power Authority'- one could watch the lights pulsate as if they were breathing. No faders or board needed. It was quite entertaining in the follow spot booth amidst the din and smoke clouds of Reggae shows. Big-ups to the Yellow Man and Mighty Diamonds audiences.

...Of course you can't sue the 'Power Authority' for damages either, and our various sundry local.gov departments and commissions get to pay their electricity bills whenever they damn well please...Meanwhile the diminished taxpaying citizen-sucker gets to pay .56 per KW hour.

Government...Efficiently f'ing things up since the dawn of civilization.

Speaking of the dawn of civilization...To any Hippies or Gaia worshipers who might be lurking about in indignation; Please don't yammer on about 'alternative energy' as very few real families in real villages can afford to heap thirty or fifty-odd grand atop their living expenses, much less purchase and ship the recurring dead weight in batteries to our eco-palaces to ensure that our spiffy green systems can keep all our organic produce from killing us dead.

Recycling used to be voluntary. Now the trash authorities can fine a householder for not properly separating glass from yard waste, paper from glass. Even if the collectors throw it all into one big heap.
This lights-out is a way to soften the populace up for the 'necessary' blackouts the 'Power Authorities' will pronounce. You want to show that you care about the Earth don't you?
My apartment was lit as I would any other evening at home. But a lot of my neighborhood (over by Seattle U) was dark.