Wow!  That really is cool. It would be great if the USA could follow their example.
Obviously places such as hospitals or whatever can’t totally shut down, but I certainly agree that there are too many lights on all the time.
Where I live now, you can see the stars at night.
It really makes you realize how much is gained, lost and wasted every day.

Symbolism over substance. Get a nation of, say, 300 million, to reduce power consumption for 1 hour per day for 3 weeks, and we might be on the right track. Or, take the advertising budget and additional police costs during the planned black-out, and roll them over into incentives on flourescent light bulbs and reduced-flow showerheads, and we’d probably see better long-term improvements. But really, 1 hour shutting out the lights, to me, just seems like a headline-grab for the Kyotoreligious feel-gooders.

Like LiveAid, I suppose?
I guess I feel that raising awareness is better than doing nothing at all.
::runs flip off the light switch::

Yeah, this itself isn’t going to do anything for the environment, but hopefully it will catch on and become more a common practice in the future. 
 
I tried the indoor energy saving bulbs, I found they didn’t last nearly as long as they claim, and at $3-5 each its just not worth it.  I mostly use lower light 40w bulbs, and if its not night time I usually don’t have my lights on.  Right now my curtains are open and there is plenty of light.  I’m pretty much a nazi when it comes to energy saving though, I have to pay the electric bill, so why not!
 
What really gets to me is earth day.  1/365 days, everyone goes out and picks up some trash and somehow feel better about themselves.  Picking up trash is completely an aesthetic thing, in fact, most of the trash will probably biodegrade faster sitting out in the open environment than it will when you put it in a dumpster and it goes off to a landfill. 
 
 

Rob, try the flourescent bulbs from IKEA. They’re pretty cheap, and lasted me more than 3 years. The light “equivalency” tends to be a bit off, though. 11W flourescent is more like 60W traditional bulb, so I usually go for the 13Ws when I can find them.