Earth Hour 2010
My loyal readers and followers on Twitter may be intrigued as to why everyone has tweeted or blogged about Earth Hour 2010 and given that I have a PhD in Environmental Studies, I write about sustainability and I teach environmental politics, why haven’t I written about it until now (Earth Hour is tonight). I have one specific reason: I find Earth Hour very symbolic but with very little actual real impact.
If you turn off your lights tonight from 8:30-9:30pm, but your day-to-day activities are still having a negative impact on the environment, how sustainable are you then? I just don’t see it. I would like people to make longer-term, long-lasting positive impacts on the environment. So, while I do encourage you to turn off your lights tonight from 8:30pm to 9:30pm, tonight March 27th, 2010, I strongly suggest as well that you take that one hour to reflect on your own behaviours and habits, and think about ways in which you can reduce your ecological footprint, your impact on our shared planet.
You can read related posts (I’ve written about Earth Hour in 2008 and 2009 as well) and follow the fun on Twitter, Facebook and on a variety of blogs. I will be attending the Global Agents for Change gala, but I may not stay too late, so it is quite likely that I’ll be spending Earth Hour either walking around my neighbourhood or commuting!
More on the history of Earth Hour:
Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their lights off for one hour to make their stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the, Sydney Harbour Bridge, The CN Tower in Toronto, The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.
SIDE NOTE – I think that the Earth Hour movement has grown so much online, and social media has helped enormously. Last year, I was contacted by the WWF Canada to help spread the word, while this year I wasn’t, but the online buzz about Earth Hour has been unprecedented, so I think this year they didn’t think they needed to do a blogger relations campaign to get the word out. Twitter, you amaze me sometimes.
Related posts:
- Earth Hour Canada 2011
- Earth Day is today April 22nd
- Earth Hour Canada 2009 – What will I do?
- Brave New Code Earth Hour (Canada) Plugin
- Earth Hour Canada and living green
Raul, you are right… most of us should do more.
But here, particularly in BC, with its resource-based economy, our whole culture has never been based on sustainability. With the exception of the aboriginal population, almost everyone came here for the resources.
When I lived on the prairies, I found that many of the families had come for the free lands. Their family stories are filled with heroic tales of hardship during the first winters in Canada (over a century ago). I grew up in Quebec humming the songs of the voyageurs who traveled into the interior of Canada to transport pelts to ships waiting to take them to Europe. The story of the gradual failure of the fisheries was one I heard often as young people moved from the maritimes to the interior cities. Here in the west there are countless stories of fortune and frustration in pursuit of mineral wealth.
The Canadian story is one of people who came for the wealth of free lands, free fish, free fur, free minerals and free trees. This is our heritage and our culture. We are exploiters, and our stories and songs show we have been proud of it. 150 years ago the world seemed almost infinite in its ability to supply everything we needed. No one imagined the growth in population that followed, and the clever technology we would develop to become more efficient in exploiting our world. Today the eastern fisheries are depleted, there is almost no tall grass prairie anywhere, and a tour of BC on Google Earth will show how we have transformed our landscape.
A culture does not change in a heartbeat.
If people will begin with only the symbolic act of turning out lights for one hour, it means that for one hour of discomfort we who are in the dark are all contemplating a profound change in our culture. It is a small step, but for some it could be the beginning of a major change.
Thank you for writing this post. I was thinking about writing about the same thing. Earth Hour is nonsense. It’s an example of Single-Action Bias: we take a single action and feel like we have done or are doing our part. Earth Hour is a huge example of this and I think it actually does more damage than good.
The efforts of organizers should go to year round education and information about what we can do to save an way more than an hour’s worth of energy. I too “would like people to make longer-term, long-lasting positive impacts on the environment.”
I agree with Kemp. I won’t tweet EH, and hazard even to respond here, because nobody loves a killjoy, but we are way beyond the point where symbolic acts like this will have an impact. We don’t need any more symbolism, we need profound systemic change, driven by policy and regulations. Baby steps and lifestyle decisions haven’t moved the needle.
Yes, we need change, driven by the policy of the people.
nice one )