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Earth Hour – Does it matter?
By arzhou | March 25, 2009
28th March 2009 is Earth Hour.
Earth Hour is an annual international event created by the WWF, held on the last Saturday of March, that asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour; Based on an idea successfully executed in Thailand in 2005, it was pioneered by WWF Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007. (From Wikipedia)
In Singapore there is alot of hype over this. Every morning, it is definitely over the airwaves, I listen to 95.0 FM every morning and I swear, I hear about Earth Hour at least 8-10 times an hour (I could be exaggerating but its just alot).
“Do your part, let us FIGHT climate change!” ~ Earth Hour Ad on 95.0 FM
While all this is nice and dandy, I really wonder if people (or Singaporeans) in general actually know WHY we really have Earth Hour. If you think that you are saving the Earth by turning off your lights and other non-essential appliance for 1 hour (it can be argued in my case that my computer is essential) can actually save the Earth… then as what the guy in White Tiger (good book btw) says, “What a beeping Joke”. I just read this blogpost this morning by Damien Tan, it highlights (although rather anecdotally) that people might not actually get the actual reason behind Earth Hour.
The point is that Earth Hour is just a symbolic act. The real proof is what you do AFTER Earth Hour. Do you return to your normal life? Or do you take ACTION to reduce your personal Carbon Footprint? Have you already done simple actions such as:
- Using the air-con only when necessary and when you do it is set to room temperature (25 degrees Celsius)
- Using public transportation instead of driving
- Even just changing to energy saving devices
- There are many more stuff you can do but I will leave it to you to google that
Just turning off your lights/appliances for 1 hour each year will not save the Earth or even reduce your carbon footprint significantly. In fact it barely does anything to it, what is 1 hour when compared to a year?
The take away message from Earth Hour is that we need to change our lifestyles to something more sustainable, its not about what you do in that 1 hour, but in the hours AFTER that.
I certainly hope people get the message…
Topics: Analysis and Views, Environment | 5 Comments »
March 25th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Yes it does matter. It is not how much we save but just that we do and bringing the message across. We could be saving 0.00000001%, but at least we are still doing something. If we are able to sacrifice this 1 hour, all the more we will be able to do so in our daily lives.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Hi Darran, thanks for the comment. I believe the main point of my post is that the message on cutting down our carbon footprint has to be brought across. If not all this is for naught. I hope people will not see this as just 1 event but follow up in their daily lives.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Well, the idea is never at “turn off the lights for 1 hour and we’ll save earth”. The idea is to turn off lights for 1 hour to generate awareness about climate change.
If like what you say, after earth hour, we go back to our usual wasteful lifestyle, then I think earth hour is a big failure. It’s never about how many people turning off the lights during earth hour. Its about how many people’s lifestyle can it change.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
i always participate whenver there is an Earth Hour event. it is a good thing that the World Wildlife Fund organized an event like this.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Earth Hour is really a good concept on how we could spend at least a few minutes of our time in remembering mother Eearth. people should be more aware and more caring of our environment now that we have Global Warming and Climate Change.