Earth Hour

Looks like Earth Hour got lots of unwarranted negative attention because its idea ended up being misunderstood. While the original purpose is clearly stated as being to raise awareness, the media seems to have largely presented it as a collective energy-saving effort of sorts. Even the most numbers-blind eco-zombies should be able to tell that tiny energy savings for one hour per year should not make a difference. And that was certainly noticed by the passive aggressors seen commenting every new story on the subject, who were all too eager to label Earth Hour as another example of environmentalist stupidity.

I am usually don't care for publicity stunts like this, but I rather like the concept of Earth Hour. It is a rare example of public awareness event that goes straight to the point without being overly intrusive or trying to use a popular theme to sell a political agenda (the Buy Nothing Day being an example of a repulsive campaign of the latter kind). The way I see it, what Earth Hour asks you to do is:

1. Turn off as many lights as you can while still being comfortable, or perhaps some more.
2. Consider which lights were actually necessary.
3. When the hour is over, rethink which lights you actually need to turn back on.

The point is to assess how much, and what kind of, use of energy (or other resources, for that matter) contributes to one's own quality of life. Much of our current consumption actually has a minimal effect on it, instead being caused by the combination of the convenience of not caring about waste, and cheap the cost of energy. Unfortunately, forcing people to actually reconsider energy use by rising costs would probably require very steep increases in prices, which would make many actually important energy-requiring things prohibitively expensive. For example, most people would think that refrigerators are well used 24-hour electricity (although it's debatable if cooling 20 °C indoor air makes sense in a country with average outdoor temperatures about the same as the fridge). If we assume that with energy costing 10 times as much as it does now, people would cut their energy spending by half, electricity bills would still go up by a factor of five. This would tempt many to save on the important things as well, including those that affect health, and thus the policy would backfire in public healthcare costs. In any case, while we may well have to eventually compromise on our standard of living to keep sustainable, we might as well start with cutting the wasteful stuff first.

Saturday's party was a good example of how people would deal with parts 1 and 3 of the list above without having to be too conscious about part 2. Lights went off at 8:30 with the lighting of a few candles, people would turn them on to use the bathroom and for other essential things, and nobody felt the need to rush back to the light switch at 9:30. The majority of the lights remained off for most of the evening - I'm sure we weren't the only place to have this effect. And as long as there was anybody to whom that realization gave reason to reconsider their habits with energy, Earth Hour has served its purpose.