Earth Hour: Lighting the way?
By Rebecca Stewart
Earth Hour was designed and implemented as a way to draw attention to the global warming crisis. Its aim is to help the world reduce unnecessary electricity usage in an attempt to cut the greenhouse gases polluting the planet.
Earth Hour’s mission for 2009 is to “determine the future for the planet”. With the world’s leaders meeting in December for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to discuss a successor to the Kyoto treaty, Earth Hour 2009 “aims to provide a platform for 1 billion people from around the world to express their desire for unified and urgent action on climate change”.
What started off as a one hour event in Sydney is now a worldwide phenomena. But is this anything but a novelty for the people participating?
The idea behind Earth Hour is a great one – essentially reduce your usage and you save the planet.
Organised by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the event asks households around the world to turn off their non-essential electrical power devices to raise awareness for the need to take action to reduce the effects of man-made climate change.
Created in 2007 by the WWF and the Sydney Morning Herald, the event gained popularity and large following. In 2008 it was taken to the world with great success.
In 2009, the event grew to 4000 participating cities from 400 in 2008. The 2007 event saw 2.2 million Sydneysiders turn off their lights. In 2008, 50 million people worldwide turned off their lights for the hour on the last day in March.
The event has generated a lot of interest in climate change and changing the way
During the event, each city saved a substantial amount of power – for that one hour. But has this event raised the awareness of climate change? More to the point, has the message of climate change and the need for the reduction in the use of energy (and everything else climate change related) sunk in?
Has Earth Hour seen a reduction in the usage of non-essential electrical appliances outside of that one hour once a year? For some, personally, it may have. But there has not been any conclusive evidence to show that Earth Hour has been making a difference to everyday living and to the long-term effects of climate change.
People, keen to participate in the event and show their support for a global cause are just as quick to take up their old habits.
While it’s going to take more than one hour a year to change people’s habits, there are still things people around the world can do such as switching off unused lights and appliances on standby, switching to energy saving light globes, reducing the use of hot water and switching over to green energy.
Earth Hour faces some big challenges. One is that it is largely a political issue. And, as with all good political issues, there is a lot of debate, discussion and going around in circles before something is agreed upon. The biggest, though, is that, because the effect of global warming is so, well, global, the unification for the fight, especially on a political issue is difficult. Each country has its own ideas as to how they can cut their carbon footprint. And this idea can differ radically from one country to the next. Getting the world – the political leaders – to agree upon one way to tackle climate change is like asking all the countries to stop their wars.
Global warming has its sceptics. And these guys can be in force. It’s difficult enough to unite the world to fight one cause, let alone trying to unite the world and convince the sceptics that something needs to be done.
It’s going to be difficult for the creators of Earth Hour to get their message out permanently, rather than for just one hour a year.
But Earth Hour has the potential to be a turning point for the world. It’s following has been growing, and it can now be followed, not only on its own site, but social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter among others.
While this following is one small step in the fight against global warming, the battle really starts after the one hour on the last Saturday in March has ended.
