Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Earth hour was conceived by WWF and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney’s lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. Earth Hour 2010 will take place on March 27, 2010 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., local time.

In the same page, all the achievements were highlighted. Every hour, the organizer hope to outdo the previous year in term of participants, reduction of power consumption in the hour etc.

But in between the year, does the overall power consumption reduced?
Do these supporters committed to a reduction in power consumption for the year ahead?
Do these supporters support the Earth Hour for publicity or image purpose?
Or after the Earth Hour, life goes back to usual?

Just this afternoon, I saw a friend commented on the Facebook on how cold it was in a government building due to air-conditioning. This is a wastage of energy. So much for the supporter’s commitment.

I hope that, this year, it would be a difference. A difference that every supporters really committed to the taking action to reduce power consumption and counter climate change.

For me, I will not switch my lights off for this purpose. I believe that it is a on-going process to counter climate change.

Related Blogs

• Elemental » Planning policy requirements for climate change
• DailyDPBA » Blog Archive » WWF's Earth Hour 2010
• Web site tracks electricity consumption for smart-meter users …
• Private Capital Consumption: Another Downside of the Wartime …
• The Sil » Blog Archive » Don't just endure, enjoy Earth Hour
• Earth Hour: Because change is hard
• Liberal Conspiracy » Earth Hour on Saturday
• Turn Off Your Lights for Earth Hour – Earth911.com
• interactive activism: earth hour, lights off | Design You Trust
• Livestock, climate change and a mediocre media « Plan C
• lights out for Earth Hour. | A Green Living Blog

According to Wikipedia - “Earth Hour is an international event organised by the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund), and held on the last Saturday of March each year, which asks households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.”

I just could not understand how does switching off the lights for one hour helps to in reducing the energy used. Countries reported the reduction in Megawatt and directly reducing tons of carbon dioxide released into the air.

My questions is, WHY do we have to do our part only during Earth Hour?

Earth Hour is only observed once a year. Imagine this, if country X reduce 100 tons of carbon dioxide into the air by observing the Earth Hour, that means that country X is actually releasing 100 x 24 x 365 or 876000 tons of carbon dioxide every year. The saving is peanuts compared to the released gas!

I believe that to really achieve the reduction of energy consumption, we need to have a regular, highly frequency and consistent effort. If we simply switch off non-essential light for half hour every day, this would means observing Earth Hour 182 times a year.

On top of that, there are also more effective means to cut energy consumption. Let me use my home country, Singapore, as an example. The average daily temperature is between 29 to 33 degree Celsius. Most office building have the air conditioning temperature set at 23 degree Celsius! Imagine the amount of energy used to cool the building. This is ionic that we are wet with sweat because of the heat in the open space, but we have to wear jacket in office to keep ourselves warm!

We just need to make these office building increase the air conditioning temperature by 1 degree Celsius and we can achieve a much more saving compared to Earth Hour.

The Earth Hour was observed a day ago. I do not know how much energy saved, how much reduction on the carbon dioxide released. I believe that, we just need to observe energy saving in our daily life. Simply reducing the non-essential light everyday and increasing air conditioning temperature are just 2 means to achieve much greater result.

Let us hope that, not only during Earth Hour, then we are doing something for the Earth. And we are doing something everyday to combat Global Warming and Global Climate Change.