Earth Hour Dilemma

Tonight at 8 p.m. we will experience Earth Hour.  The idea is that everyone will switch off lights and non-essential appliances to “show our support for sustainability”.  The idea was launched last year in Sydney, where energy use dropped over 10% for one hour.

This is a wonderful idea, but the hype that accompanies it has been just a bit too much for me and some other people who’ve been supporting sustainability for the past thirty-odd years.

Every day for weeks and weeks there’ve been lengthy articles in the “Press” exhorting us to make compost, walk to work, eschew heated towel rails, buy NZ made, etc.  I don’t doubt the “Press”’s good intentions, but for me they’ve gone too far.  There are restaurants advertising candle-lit dinners for Earth Hour, and shops having Earth Hour sales.  Some of us old Values/Green people are starting to think “bah, humbug!”.

Of course we’ll turn our lights off during Earth Hour (even though our annual electricity consumption is about 60% of the amount that qualifies you as a “low” user).  However, this will be more because we don’t want to be seen to not be “showing support for sustainability”, rather than because we’ve been convinced by the Earth Hour hype.  I certainly don’t want to re-hash any old debates about who’s the Greenest, but I don’t think any good purpose is served when people who’ve been Green for decades feel obliged to make gestures for negative reasons.

I’m absolutely delighted that mainstream media like the “Press” are jumping on the Green bandwagon (even they I might cynically say ‘where’ve they been all these years?’).  My fervent prayer is that those who’ve been convinced by the Earth Hour hoo ha (especially those who’ve bought the t-shirts) will carry it through into their everyday lives.

“It’s great to see it in the ‘Press’
But I think they’ve gone to excess.”