In Praise of Darkness

According to the CBC, engineers somewhere are pondering the great question of how to "electrify the dark continent". Look up, says the author, and praise the beautiful wires that bring you the light, the microwave, the idiot box.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/goinggreen/africa.html
Heaven forbid, the people of Africa should look up and see the Heavens. Blot out those stars.
I think that instead of figuring out how to Light Up the Dark Continent" we should be looking at how the heck to Darkify the Luminescent Continents.
Here's what the earth looks like at night:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
IS IT BRIGHT ENOUGH FOR YA?
World population without electricity: 1.7 billion
Africa's proportion: one-third
Per capita electricity consumption Africa (2004): 494.9 kWh
Per capita Canada (2004): 15,744 kWh
Now, I'm not suggesting that all the poor people sit around in the dark all the time with no laptops or anything to occupy their evenings. I'm just suggesting that maybe we don't need to go whole hog and turn the world into energy pigs. Remember the hydro crisis a few summers ago? The lights were out on the entire eastern part of North America for a whole night. It proved that we don't need every friggin light on to prevent us all from turning into a bunch of murderous looters. Did you know that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and Environment Canada Buildings have a big blazing light party on every night? Why?
I'm just saying that maybe we could tone it down a little. Darkify a bit. Look up at the sky.
U.N. Recognizes 2009 as International Year of Astronomy. Maybe for 2009 we could all try to be a little more like Africa. What's wrong with being a dark continent?