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The pointlessness of Earth Hour
By RickMeasham | March 30, 2008
You’ve probably heard of Earth Hour, it started in Sydney last year and has spread around the globe this year. The idea is this: turn off all your lights for an hour.
The pointlessness comes in the confusion over why this is a good idea.
Turning your lights off for 1 hour will save approximately zero energy. Though, for a lot of people, this seems to be their reason for participation. In fact, even Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, seems to think this is the point of the excercise. Their article proclaims “Energy use dimmed during Earth Hour“. That’s right, during “Earth Hour” we saved about 10% of the electricity we’d normally use — 24 tonnes of CO2 wasn’t expelled.
It’s the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road for an hour. Sounds a lot right? Hang on, let’s do some math: 48,000 cars divided by 8,784 hours in this year = 5.4. Yes! That’s right .. earth hour last night was the equivalent of taking less than 6 cars off the road for a year.
Of course, the organizers do know what they’re talking about. They do know that taking 5.4 cars off the road for a year is pointless. According to EarthHour.org, the point is “to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming“. That’s right. It’s an awareness campaign.
Now if everyone is turning off their lights in order to keep those 5.4 cars on the road, Earth Hour has been a monumental flop. Totally pointless. Most people who participated thought they were helping to save the planet simply by turning off their lights.
At least The Age (an official press-partner of Earth Hour) acknowledges that the immediate environmental impact of the ’switch off’ will be little to none:
Given the complex auctioning process that determines the different energy sources that are fed into the national electricity grid each day, there may not be a cut at all.
So if there’s going to be Earth Hour 2009 (and I’m guessing there will be) then lets try and make sure people aren’t of the notion that Earth Hour has any sort of immediate affect on the environment. If you’re going by candlelight for the hour, use that candlelight to send a handwritten letter to a politician or business demanding some sort of specific change.
If you turned out your lights last night, don’t stop there. Make sure you take notice of the real reason for the event. Now you’ve made the statement, make sure you now do something about the environment.
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