Earth Hour Conflict

Ok. So I support Earth Hour. I appreciate the idea of raising awareness of smarter, more ecofriendly energy consumption and a better awareness of being a responsible eco-citizen in general, but...

I was in the mall today picking up a copy of Lolita and on my way back to the bus stop I noticed that Sears (of all places) had an Earth Hour sign outside its store. And I thought "oh yeah, Earth Hour is Saturday". Then I looked some more and there were at least 8 glossy cardboard signs outside the store entrance adverstising Earth Hour. AND there was a 32'' flat screen tv running a countdown clock to Earth Hour.

Now, call me cycnical, but why, oh why would you run a TV CONSTANTLY to adverstise something that is supposed to raise awareness about energy consumption? Then I started to think about those glossy cardboard signs. I don't think you can really recycle finished glossy cardboard signs. Now I realize Earth Hour is more about energy consumption than recycling, but just how much energy was used making all those signs? Whats going to happen to them after Saturday? How many more stores in how many more malls are doing this?

I was thinking that maybe Earth Hour should be more of a grassroots movement. Word of mouth, IM's, facebook invites, that sort of thing. Although you have to be using energy to be online at least it's not generating tonnes of garbage in the name of the environment.

On the other hand the argument could be made that that TV running the countdown clock would probably be turned on inside one of 30 demo tvs running the latest Pixar film on a loop.

Gah! What to do? Is the awareness raised worth more than the cost to raise it? I don't know. It just made me think.

k-

ps. Check out the Wikipedia article on Earth Hour, I guess I'm not the only one to wonder about this.

pps. I've been checking out stuff online:
This guy also had some interesting things to say.