He said
Earth Hour is an initiative of the World Wildlife Foundation that is certainly a noble one. That doesn't mean it is helping push people to conserve energy that is wasted on things we don't use or demand policy changes that would help the environment.
There is an excellent political cartoon in The Mercury this week commenting on how many individuals are satisfied to retweet something, update a status or a share a link online so that they feel like they are making a difference. The cartoon called it slacktivism.
Earth Hour, which was intended to be a statement by the masses that we expect things to be done to clean up the Earth, is now, five years on, a simple outlet for slacktivism. The global movement to turn off the lights for one hour every year is just a jumping off point. People still have to perform a barrel roll or some actual gymnastic manoeuvre and stick the landing. That's difficult, and it takes work.
Earth Hour has done a great job at raising awareness, but I haven't seen it translate to action. If people think Earth Hour is the action, they are greatly mistaken. They are slacktivists.
Just like the Kony situation, where people thought that by sharing a video and forgetting about it meant they were solving a problem in Africa.
It's great that people turn their lights off in an organized effort to let the policy-makers of the day know we are interested in making a difference, but if that's not followed by further action from more than a miniscule minority, those policy-makers will assume that all we care about is their participation in the 60 minute lights out period.
Our leaders work directly for us, kind of like our employees, and we do get to make demands of them. Earth Hour is not a demand.
It's not that politicians don't want to form policy that helps the environment, but if they are going to do that, it's going to be hard. They better have a lot of serious public support to take on such a challenge, because it's a lot easier not to do anything. The politicians aren't alone here, because every year people across the globe do nothing when they read their book for an hour by candlelight.
She said
I'd say that yes, Earth Hour does inspire some awareness from the public, but not to the extent that would really benefit the Earth.
Because using less power, even if it's just a couple of people and only for an hour at a time, it is still using less power.
And I don't really see it having long lasting, major effects beyond that. It's kind of like how I treat flossing my teeth. Every time I visit the dentist, I vow to floss my teeth every single day for the rest of my life, because flossing is easy and important and not extremely time consuming. And for a week, I floss like crazy and feel awesome about my teeth and the great change I'm making for my dental health.
And then I get lazy and skip a day. And then another day. And I'm rushing to work and there just isn't time, so I promise I'll floss before bed, but I stay out too late and am half-asleep when I get home so I don't remember to floss.
And pretty soon I'm back to flossing once a month. And I acknowledge that flossing would be great, but I'd rather spend my time doing other things.
Earth Hour is the same. Most people can agree that making an effort to use less electricity and benefit the world is a great thing. But doing so means sitting in the dark for an hour, not doing anything. Maybe you're like me and that hour would be better spent doing two weeks worth of laundry or washing a pile of dishes. And while I could do that in the dark, I'd still be running water and using power to get my chores done. Plus I have a tough enough time matching up my socks with the lights on.
So Earth Hour is great. I totally approve of participating. Just don't really expect to make a huge difference, because while you're sitting in the dark, your neighbour's kid left his video game on pause on the family big screen, in a room with all the lights on.
