Tonight at 8.30 pm local time it will be Earth Hour. This event launched by the WWF is promoting awareness on global warming. Many cities and companies all around the world will participate.
Last year no less than 50 million people switched their lights off for the occasion. This year, the NGO is targeting one billion people as it would send a huge signal to global leaders who will gather in Copenhagen.
The future of the Kyoto Protocol will be discussed in December and we need to show our commitment to avoiding climate change. So let’s switch off our lights !
Awesome. We could have an Honesty Hour, and a Fidelity Hour, and a Tolerance Hour – for just one hour a year, we could tell the truth, not be unfaithful to our spouse, and not be racist, sexist and so on.
Just for one hour. This would make world leaders aware that we considered honesty, fidelity and tolerance to be very important issues! They would know this from the way we went straight back to lying, screwing and hating the instant the hour was over.
I didn’t turn my lights off for Earth Hour. I show what I want by a sustained effort over the whole year. That won’t make the news, but it’s much more effective in creating change.
I fear to disagree with you on that one Kiashu.
On Saturday at 8.30 pm I arrived by my grandparents’ place. My grandma had turned off most lights and the place was lit by candles. She told me that she was doing it after watching the news about Earth hour on TV.
I told her it was a good idea and that if she wanted to keep helping the planet I would buy her CFLs so she can save some money and decrease for good her electricity consumption. She said it would be a great idea.
Earth hour is to bring awareness to people who don’t know much about the issue – like my grandma. Then it is our duty to help them once they are aware of the problem.
That’s it : Earth hour don’t have another goal: More people got to acknowledge the problem and begin to act.
If you’d offered to buy her CFLs and install them before Earth Hour, she would have accepted then, too. In fact, I think you could buy CFLs and offer to install them in the houses of random strangers, and most would accept.
People are always happy to “change” if someone else suggests it, and that someone else will spend the money and make the effort. We don’t need global gestures to achieve that.
If you can show me that Earth Hour has convinced someone to do something without prompting by someone else, something which requires spending money or effort, then I’ll be impressed. If for example after Earth Hour your grandmother had asked you to install CFLs, and arrange for her to buy wind energy, or if someone were giving up their car, etc.
At this stage, everyone on the planet who wants to be aware is aware of the climate change problem. It’s like how we have nutritional information on food packets, but we still have a lot of obese unhealthy people. Lack of knowledge isn’t the issue, it’s lack of caring.
The other day we visited a workmate of my woman’s, they had four televisions (including one large LCD and one projection screen), four computers, two stereos, two game consoles, two cars, a boat, and lots of halogen downlights.
“Wow, you have lots of stuff!” I said.
“Yes,” his wife said, “my husband loves all this stuff, I tell him his energy footprint is huge!”
The husband smiled, laughed and shrugged.
Knowing is easy. Caring is hard. An Earth Hour actually works against caring, because when people make a warm gesture, they think that’s enough. Psychologists tell us that if a man usually doesn’t bother giving flowers, but starts doing it a lot with his wife, it may be a sign of infidelity; he assauges his guilt at the big wrong by doing a small good. And of course it doesn’t balance out.