Climate protection: there's nothing worse than ignorance

The lights went out in thousands of cities across the world on Saturday in protest at climate change. Environmentalists spoke of a huge victory of the action known as "Earth Hour". Oscar van den Boogaard, a writer and columnist for the daily De Standaard, felt sure he was the only one in Berlin to turn out the light: "Berlin's answer to Earth Hour is the 'Long Night of Shopping'. The freedom of shop owners to sell their wares is, however you look at it, a political action. Here the Long Night of Shopping is the perfect way to distract consumers from Earth Hour. I asked people on the street if they'd heard of Earth Hour, but no one knew anything about it. ... Regardless of whether we feel optimistic or pessimistic, it's important that people should be aware of the earth's vulnerability, that they form an opinion on the subject and accept responsibility for it. ... A collective feeling of guilt is not the worst thing there is, ignorance is: shopping all night on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm and not even knowing that at that very moment millions of people all over the world were turning off their lights."

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