Tonight people around the world are celebrating Earth Hour. Apparently, turning lights off for an hour will help the environment. Well, I’m glad so many people are blogging, tweeting, and taking pictures of this darkness. That doesn’t use electricity, does it? Though I prefer celebrating Human Achievement Hour, this picture of darkness at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Skyline reminds me of the final page of Atlas Shrugs:

They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was only a void of darkness and rock, but the darkness was hiding the ruins of a continent: the roofless homes, the rusting tractors, the lightless streets, the abandoned rail. But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt’s Torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce.

“The road is cleared,” said Galt. “We are going back to the world.”

He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.

Who is John Galt?