by Samantha Chow (M/6366)
Earth Hour has passed and gone, but did it really achieve its purpose?
The point of Earth Hour is to spread global awareness about saving energy and at the same time, actually do some real energy saving.
It was a global awareness alright but did it achieve its other purpose? Did the people on earth really use lesser energy on Earth Hour or did the energy usage actually increase due to all the publicity, parties and concerts? (All in the name of Earth Hour pfft)
I'm afraid I have to agree with some people that Earth Hour was more like a publicity stunt (for sponsors like giant retailer Sears who 'proudly announced that they're a national sponsor of Earth Hour 2009', countless radio and TV stations who halted transmission for an hour, and Google etc).
Many people want to be known as environmentally friendly as it's a cool 'in-thing' but do you really stop to think of the extra energy used in countless (all forms of) adverts to promote Earth Hour? Is the energy saved from Earth Hour enough to compensate for it?
I think that Earth Hour was used by many as an excuse to party! And no, I'm not condemning it because it’s what we 'socialites' like to do nowadays. Find any reason to go out! Truth be told, I would've gone on the party that night at Capsquare, KL myself if not for my assignment and Grey's Anatomy.
That is why I do not think that the true noble point of Earth Hour has been achieved by the party itself due to energy spent on 'spreading awareness of the issue'.
Although, you can give justification for the parties and stuff by saying that 'spending all the energy now creates awareness in people so that they'll learn to save more energy in the future', and yes I agree! Earth Hour was done to spread AWARENESS and since this was done on a (somewhat successful) global scale, so congratulations!
Now it's our part as individuals to save energy as much as we can on a constant mode and not only give a blind 'show of support' for publicized events like Earth Hour.
God, even the people who started Earth Hour admitted that it was just a hypocritical campaign, and that we may have actually emitted MORE emissions instead!
So how TRULY environmentally friendly are you?
(Originally published at http://samanthacje.com/2009/03/hi-all-how-was-your-weekend-now-ill.html on March 30th 2009)
Samantha authors a blog at http://samanthacje.com
Originally published in the Malaysian Mensa magazine Triple M February-April 2009 Issue, page 14.
