85. Earth Hour
Does the whole idea of Earth Hour seem to make little sense to you? If so, you’ll probably join me in my hatred of this soulless publicity stunt. Promoters of this foul day estimated that for the one hour that people shut off their lights, worldwide carbon emissions would decrease by 10%. OK, I’ll concede that would be an admirable feat, EXCEPT, the sum total of all the pollution involved with promoting this day has to be more than than the carbon emissions that were reduced for said day. I happened to walk by a booth promoting this day and it was equipped with two television sets, several laptops, and music. Now this one booth running some equipment probably produces close to no pollutants, except these booths were all around the world, in malls, on streets, and in businesses. Pamphlets promoting this day were handed out everywhere and unless these pamphlets were made of some mystery product that doesn’t pollute the atmosphere, they too damaged our environment.
Even Google got in on this shit, tell me you weren’t confused yesterday when Google pumped out an entirely black homepage. I felt like I entered some portal into the 4th layer of hell as my brain produced quasi-seizure symptoms and I fell into a spell that incorporated nausea and vertigo. I know Google is doing its part, however, as soon as I typed something in to the search engine the next page reverted back to the pollution filled white page. I suppose Google realized they could only fuck with us so much, after realizing their trickery I promptly boycotted the search engine and can only pray that it will go back to its environment damaging, panda killing ways.
WTF!
The shear lunacy of this day is mind-boggling, sure it raises awareness, but if this boycott of electricity were to extend for two hours, or three, I’m certain we would all hear a big collective, “fuck that.” This just appears to be one of those pseudo-environmentalist days perpetuated by an unidentifiable conglomerate of quasi-’save the rain forest’ types who would give up electricity for an hour but still have two hour long showers, wash their hair in baby seal blood, and moisturize with blubber of the sperm whale. Every little bit counts I suppose, but if we really want to prevent this catastrophic collapse of our environment we need to consciously revert back to our ancestral days where we didn’t have flush toilets and imported oranges were a luxury only made available at Christmas time.
Earth day just made us feel better about our wasteful lives, and will only allow us to feel like ok with the fact we are fucking up the environment. Anyone turn off their lights today at 8pm? Didn’t think so.
I did and so did many, many other people. I don’t think people did it because they honestly thought they were saving the world. They did it because they wanted other people to know they were thinking about saving the world. Psychologically, people feel isolated. Turning off their lights made them feel part of something. Maybe it was an ineffectual something, but at least it was a start.
Right, I know you personally are conscious of this issue (you are my mother and all), however I think most people will walk away from Earth hour and say “look at the impact I made”. Instead of “look at the impact I’m making”.
That’s my issue. Noble event, what people take away from it, I suppose we’ll see.
Hi, I think I see your point. But I am hoping that people who did turn their lights off understand that this was an awareness event and we didn’t really save the planet in 60 minutes. And yes, I had my lights off though my neighbors were burning enough electricity for a few houses….We just have to keep on trying to get people to pull their heads out of the sand
I also turned my lights off. While there’s a good point in the EarthHour’s promotion methods, I think this hateblog is more about social environmentalists than EarthHour itself.
i hated when stupid old women came into my place of employment and gave us a hard time for not turning off our lights. sorry, but if somebody tries to rob us, we want to be able to identify them. also, if you bump into a table, we dont want to be held liable.
We turned off our music, we turned off an espresso machine, we turned off a blender, we turned off the optional lights, we turned off any unused tills, so LEAVE US ALONE!
just sayin’
While I understand the premise of what earth hour is supposed to accomplish, I completely agree with you in terms of how much energy is wasted. I’d be interested to see a study of the potential (but unlikely) energy fluctuation of turning as much as you can off for an hour and then turning all of those things back in a matter of a few minutes. From what I know I’m nearly positive it takes a lot more energy to turn something on/boot something up than it does to sit idle for most house hold products.