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Yes, everyone is talking about Earth Hour at the moment. Millions of people across the world have marked Earth Hour by switching off lights in over 88 countries. It was indeed great to see Malaysia took part in the campaign as well. Of course, there have been a lot of debates over the week on the relevance of the Earth Hour campaign. Some claimed that it was merely a publicity stunt and some even protested that switching off the lights for an hour won’t solve climate change!

First of all, Earth Hour is in fact a publicity campaign (or shall i put it as a symbolism of world’s voice), aimed at highlighting the need for citizen across the globe to be aware of climate change and global warming and send a strong message to the politicians in countries (which are not doing their best to fight global warming). Leading to the event, you can see of activities taking place, all with the purpose of educating the people on the effects of global warming.

Secondly, switching off your lights for one hour probably doesn’t affect much on climate change, but when millions of people doing it at the same time, it DOES make a difference! Reports from various countries show how power consumptions dropped more than 10% during the Earth Hour. Imagine the results if we do it everyday! On another note, Earth Hour is mainly targetting at big buildings that consume a lot of energy like all those skyscrapers because most of the lights switched on at night are for “decorative” purposes.

At home, you can do the same. But What if your lights are compact fluorescent bulbs? What if your house is powered by windmills or solar? Well, it doesn’t really matter, because this is about symbolism. If you’re already practising energy conservation at home, then Earth Hour is just a signal of your support!

Most people who go against Earth Hour is mainly trying to underestimate what others are doing. While they are criticising efforts done by WWF or UN, they do nothing about the environment. They talk about the failure of Earth Hour in solving climate change, but in practise they don’t even bother about doing something to solve that problem and put blame on governments and policy makers for not doing anything. Come on, every big leap start with the small steps! If every single citizen in the world participate in green campaigns like this, we’ll make Earth a better place!

What’s Next?

Continue to practise Green Lifestyle like cutting energy consumption at your home and reduce the frequency of using fossil-fuel cars, save water, etc. Earth Hour may only be an hour, but it’s a strong reminder for our future and our survival on planet Earth!