Earth Hour

On Saturday night, for an hour from 8.30 until 9.30, the stars will seem to shine a little brighter.  Over 50 million people around the world took part in Earth Hour last year, and this year New Zealand will once again lead the world in raising awareness of climate change and how what we do as individuals adds up to an enormous collective impact.  It's a fun activity for families and communities to participate in together.

Joining in is as simple as switching off your lights for an hour.  You can register your participation and go in the draw to win a Toyota Prius at www.nz.earthhour.org/prius. 

Some keen environmentally aware students at Opotiki College have formed a new Enviro-group, and they are encouraging teachers to teach for an hour on Friday without using electricity.  This is no easy task in our computer-dependant world, and should prove challenging.  To really promote the environmental message of Earth Hour, the Enviro-group has called for a ‘Green’ mufti-day to be held later to raise funds for new recycling bins to be put in each classroom.   The initiative shown by these students is commendable; they know that climate change will put their future world at risk and are starting the journey of taking action towards sustainability.

Earth Hour activities in the household could be a lot of fun.  With small children already in bed, older kids might enjoy a game of ‘blind mans bluff’, or spooky story reading by torch-light.  You can buy rechargeable torches that you either shake or wind up to power the bright LED lights from retailers in Opotiki.  One minute winding provides enough power for half an hour.

In the introduction of his book ‘Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning’ author George Monbiot says that he had “always assumed that candles are more environmentally friendly than electric lighting, for no better reason than that I like them and that they produce less light.”   He was mistaken, as he tells us that in fact, “in terms of the light given off per watt of expended power, a candle is 71 times less efficient than an old-fashioned incandescent bulb, and 357 times worse than a compact fluorescent model.”

So unless you have beeswax candles, you could actually make the climate worse by switching off your energy-saving light bulbs and burning a few petroleum based wax candles.  Interestingly, oil lamps are also on the wasteful list, as it turns out that by “choosing to burn a litre of kerosene in an engine, to drive a generator, to power a fluorescent lamp, can produce 250–450 times more useful light than burning the same amount in an oil lamp.”

Earth Hour does run the risk then, of being a token gesture unless we take the momentum and that collective feeling of empowerment and use it to change our daily habits.  What participating gives is a sense of belonging to something greater than just the individual - it is inspiring to see that all of those lights being switched off actually does register at the power stations.  The next step is obviously to take that same collective action on a regular basis by making saving electricity an every day thing.