If the value of Earth Hour is the establishment of awareness (awareness of what?), then it should go beyond mere campaigning of turning off lights for one hour during a night time. Most people who participated in the action were willing to participate because of the simplicity and the dramatic mood of the action -- it was like a countdown at new years eve. Even a "bum" on the street who totally has no knowledge and concern for climate change and global warming would not be hard to draw to participate in it.But what if the action to be done is something that will cause some real degree of inconvenience to those who will participate, will there be many still willing to do it? Suppose if the action is done during the day and within working hours, what do you think will happen? Instead of turning off lights (which has no significant impact on climate), airconditioning units are turned off for an hour during peak hours of the day, would there still be many who are willing to participate? Will the originators of the movement still be willing to campaign for such elevated level of the action?
This is where dwells the subtle deception (that I was mentioning about in my previous blog entry). People are merely made to be aware of global warming that causes climate change in a wrong way such that they don't truly experience the real effect and danger of global warming upon themselves. As a result of that wrong way of awareness, people will keep looking forward to that event every year without truly taking real steps that can minimize global warming. And so concepts like the selling and buying of "carbon neutral credits" becomes an easy escape from doing real actions like sincere compliance on the gradual reduction of carbon emission by industrial establishments, and efforts to actually go out to denuded forest areas to actually plant trees (instead of staying inside airconditioned work places wasting time thinking of how to gain more carbon neutral credits).
Global warming is a very serious matter that demands seriousness of answers and solutions. It calls for a degree of real sacrifice and commitment of every individual, and not just convenient movements in the level of mere awareness.
May the next Earth Hour be not deceptive and insulting.
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What have we actually accomplished that made a real difference since the last earth hour "festival"?
