In March last year, the World Wildlife Fund in Australia teamed up with Leo Burnett, the multinational advertising agency that created the Marlboro Man, to come up with a new environmental campaign called Earth Hour. The idea was to get 2 million residents in Sydney to turn off all the lights in their homes for an hour. The campaign had generated wide publicity but far from all the hype and publicity behind it, the energy saved from the millions of dollars spent on advertisement and campagin was insignificantly small - the equivalent of only taking about five cars off the city's roads for a year. Mother's nature effort is cutting down power consumption would be more effective. A gale storm or the many occurance of typhoons would have caused thousands of drivers in the cities to be off the road for many hour and grounded many flights on the airport tarmac and that would have not cause Mother Nature a single cent. However despite the dismayal result, Earth Hour expanded to dozens of cities around the globe world. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York were among the US landmarks that went dark. Many corporations signed on to burnish their green credentials. Cities around Asia and Europe answered to the cherion call and encouraged its citizens to participate. In countries where the public responds seems lukewarm, organisations and governments took the lead to shut off power for an hour. The result was yet another self declared success. Although the media had showed the shutting off of lights in their respective countries, the result have yet again failed to meet its objectives. But the organiser was quick to rebut this by stating that it is the awareness that counts. So what?
If everyone who had participated in Earth Hour had left their lights on and instead switched to mundane, high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, simple calculations showed that it would have saved 1,368 times as much energy, because the bulbs would have saved energy all year. Such tension between substance and symbolism runs through the modern environmental movement.
After years of conflict between climate-change activitists and thhe carbon producing countries that had choosed to deny any direct correleation or calls to take drastic change fearing that it will hurt the economy, the movement has become a crusade that is partly moral statement and partly fashion statement. Earth Hour, Earth Day and the Miss Earth beauty pageant - "saving the planet, one pageant at a time" - generate lots of publicity, but they also tend to prompt people and companies to choose what looks good over what works. "There is a real problem in teaching people not to do something that appears to work, but that actually works
It is hard to persuade people to do things that yield the biggest energy savings, and not necessarily the biggest returns in self-satisfaction. It is very difficult to get people to invest in home insulation and energy efficiency, over aesthetic beauty
At the strike of eight when Earth Hour is supposed to commence in Singapore, I look out from my darkened room and saw my parents watching television is the lighted hall. My nephew in his room over the computer and the air-conditioning unit blowing over his head and the appliances in the kitchen being turned on when it is not even being used. Does that mean that my family is not aware of the Earth Hour movement, far from it. They have seen the adverts and news on it over many days leading to Earth Hour. They have even asked me what the campaign is all about and despite the endless conversation that I had, nothing change.
I looked out of my house and saw the many hundreds of units around me with their lights on. Kitchen lights left on when it is apparent that the stove is not smoking figuratively speaking. So I ask again, what Earth Hour?
People on the streets in Singapore city area was jubilant to see the lights from many skyscrapers being turned off, jubilant not because it is Earth Hour, but jubilant because they got to burn off candles and basked themselves in the shadows of the candle lights. The streets lights remains illuminated. Cars continued to ply down the streets in greater numbers as people instead of sitting in darkness decided to travel to the city to join the crowd. An hour later, as Earth Hour lapses, the jubilant again erupted this time in greater strength and intensity as the lights were turned on and people enjoyed the spectacles of the city being once again flooded by neon lights.
Noble an idea Earth Hour is, and pure the intent it is, the outcome far achieves the objectives. It is yet another forgetable event that people will only remember after yet another millions of dollars being soent to promote the event next year.
