Earth Hour was a success – and achieved absolutely nothing
By Dave Parrack
On Saturday, March 28, 2009, millions of people in countries all over the world switched off their lights and other energy-consumers to mark Earth Hour. Brilliant. Well done everyone. Except that it didn’t actually achieve anything, and probably never will.
Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when organized by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and the Sydney Morning Herald, an estimated 2.2 million residents in Australian city switched off their lights for one hour. It has since become an annual event held on the last Saturday of March, and cities around the world now take part.
This year’s event has been hailed a complete success, with major cities around the world being plunged into darkness for an hour on Saturday evening. Major monuments were even part of the event, with the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Empire State building in New York all taking part.
The WWF told The Associated Press:
The world said yes to climate action, now governments must follow. [This was] the world’s first-ever global vote about the future of our planet.
Except it wasn’t was it. And the chances are that as soon as the hour was up people immediately switched on all their lights and energy-consuming electrical devices again. There are roughly 8,760 hours in a year and taking action for a measly one of them isn’t going to make the slightest scrap of difference.
All Earth Hour really achieves is to make those people taking part feel better about themselves. They can spend all year abusing the environment – failing to recycle, leaving lights on around the house, leaving televisions and consoles on standby, leaving their work computer on overnight – but as long as they make the effort for Earth Hour then everything is fine.
It’s going to take a lot more than this worthless act happening once every year for there to be a real change to the way we treat the environment. Humankind is clearly abusing the planet we live on, although how much damage that’s actually doing and how much is natural is open to debate.
Earth Hour will only achieve something if it prompts governments around the world, and particularly the U.S. government, to speed up the legislation needed to help the environment. Until then, the annual event is just a few million people sitting in darkness for an hour and pretending to give a damn.
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Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!
March 29th, 2009
Our children both know to shut lights off when they leave a room and to shut the TV off when they’re done watching it. Not just to help with the earth, but more to help with my friggin electric bill…
March 31st, 2009
People get discouraged when they finally do something smart and you complain.
April 1st, 2009
Yeah, cuz we all know that it’s the US that’s the evil villian when it comes to the planet. Hey Parrack, clue time here, guess which country spends MORE MONEY AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL than almost the entire rest of the world combined on investigating alternative energy?
That said, I will agree with you the an event such as Earth Hour is a total waste of effort. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find that the total carbon consumption to promote Earth Hour (and blather about it afterwards) was MORE than was saved by turning things off that hour.