FOX News, tell me something crazy:

Sydney’s iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark Saturday night as the world’s first major city turned off its lights for this year’s Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness of climate change.

A lightning show was the brightest part of Sydney’s skyline during Earth Hour, which began at 8 p.m. when the lights were turned off at the city’s landmarks. Most businesses and homes were already dark as Sydney residents embraced their second annual Earth Hour with candlelight dinners, beach bonfires and even a green-powered outdoor movie.

Following Australia, lights will go out in major Asian cities including Manila and Bangkok before moving to Europe and North America as the clock ticks on. One of the last major cities to participate will be San Francisco — home to the soon-to-be dimmed Golden Gate Bridge.

Even popular search engine Google put its support behind Earth Hour, with a completely black page and the words: “We’ve turned the lights out. Now it’s your turn.”

People love doing things to “raise awareness,” but there’s a real big difference between “raising awareness” and “fixing the damn problem.” A major world city turning off its lights for one hour doesn’t make me more aware of climate change, it makes me more aware of the silly things that people will do who truly believe man-made climate change is going to result in a global catastrophe.

Of course, many will raise the argument: what’s the big deal with a city turning off its lights for one measly hour? I respond: no lights means no production, but I admit losing an hour of production at 8 p.m. is only about a .00000000001% (probably smaller) loss — no big deal. The problem arises when we start to fall down a slippery slope: why turn off the lights once a year when we can turn off the lights once a month? And why keep it in the cities when we can do it for a whole country? I know it sounds exaggerated, but it’s worth the mention: global starvation resulting from lowered food production will certainly kill more people than global warming, believe you me.

On an interesting note, if you had said, “Hey Ethan: name one left-wing US city and one left-wing US company,” the first things that would have popped into my mind would have been San Francisco and Google. And lo and behold, there they are in the article!

UPDATE (03/31 10:37 AM): From the Herald Sun: “Earth Hour… resulted in no significant fall in power usage.” Ha!