Earth Hour - a powerful symbol, but the right one?

Shortly it will be Earth Hour again and around the world people concerned about global warming will turn off their lights in a powerful symbol of humanity's desire to tackle global warming.

At least that's the theory.

Earth Hour has undoubtedly been hugely successful as a symbol of the need to act on global warming. In only a few years it caught on globally; this year hundreds of millions, if not billions of people will take part. 

But is it a victim of its own success? Is it a powerful symbol of tacking the climate crisis; or is it an unwitting symbol of the exact opposite?

Are we just conning ourselves?

In 2007 George Marshall, in his article “Can this really save the planet?” (The Guardian) took a look at the usual sorts of demand reduction measures we are urged to do - like use less plastic bags -  and found them wanting:

The average Brit uses 134 plastic bags a year, resulting in just two kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact ... The electricity to keep the average television on standby mode for a whole year leads to 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. It's more than plastic bags, but still very marginal: 0.2 per cent of average per capita emissions in the UK.

... Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punchline: "It's easy to be healthy - smoke one less cigarette a month."
We know without a moment's reflection that this campaign would fail.

So why do we persist with something that we know is failing?

Marshall explained:

Their logic is as follows. Simple actions capture people's attention and provide an entry-level activity. Present people with the daunting big-ticket solutions and they turn away. Give them something easy and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready to make the step up to the next level.

That is the theory, but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn't work. For one thing, making the solutions easy is no guarantee that anyone will carry them out ... And there is a greater danger that people might adopt the simple measures as a way to avoid making more challenging lifestyle changes ... In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour... 

Judging by the latest Mori poll data, people have already acquired a severely distorted sense of priorities. Forty per cent of people now believe that recycling domestic waste, which is a relatively small contributor to emissions, is the most important thing they can do to prevent climate change. Only 10% mention the far more important goals of using public transport or reducing foreign holidays. (my emphasis)

Let me give you my own experience of Earth Hour: three years ago in the office tower I worked in, we were told that at Earth Hour, if we couldn't, or didn't want to turn the lights off, we should close the blinds to make it look as if we did. That way we'd be sending a powerful symbol of our desire to....

I think you know the rest. Pointless symbolism par excellence.

Earth Hour too successful for our own good?

My concern is that Earth Hour is now so successful, people are deluding themselves into thinking that turning their lights off for an hour is doing their bit to solve global warming. Like smoking one cigarette less a month, we're turning the lights off for one hour a year.

Of course, this is totally unfair on what Earth Hour is meant to represent, as it's founder Andy Ridley explains:

People are mistaken if they believe that Earth Hour is basically a lights-out campaign. In fact, 40 per cent of the countries that take part in Earth Hour have blackouts, so turning off the lights is meaningless to them.

Earth Hour has always been about a sense of unity and a sense of community, something that western society in particular has lost. So a child in Beijing can be doing Earth Hour, at the same time as a child in Rio and another in London. There is a sense of sharing this planet together.

Unfair my concern might be; but life certainly isn't fair.

Certainly the facts on CO2e emissions are telling a dismal story. Since the IPCC's latest report, which came six years ago, emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase, except for a slight decrease during the financial crisis of 2008. Between 2000-2010 they grew faster than ever and correspond, according to recent media reports, to the worst scenarios in the IPCC's next report with projected temperature increases of four degrees by 2100.

None of this is Earth Hour's fault; it's ours. We are collectively to blame. It's no use blaming a remarkably successful advertising campaign for our own collective inability to act decisively. As Marshall summed up back in 2007:

Please don't misunderstand me. All of these actions are worth doing as part of a greener lifestyle. And I do all of them - I also turn off my tap when brushing my teeth, share my baths, and watch the telly in the dark - wearing three jumpers if need be. But it is a serious distortion to imply, as the top 10 lists of green living usually do, that there is any equivalence between these lifestyle preferences and the serious decisions that really reduce emissions - stopping flying, living close to work and living in a well-insulated house, for example.

Use Earth Hour to do more!

So come Earth Hour, by all means turn off those lights. Send a message of unity across the world that every politician will hear. But use that hour to make decisive changes about what else you're going to do to tackle global warming. If you've been thinking of getting solar power or hot water, make a decision to do it. Been thinking of cutting down on consumer goods? Stocktake what you actually already have and decide how to use it without buying more. Plan your next holiday - without flights or long drives. 

I'll even help you take the first steps: want to invest in commercial sized renewable energy? Bookmark this blog, or send Renewable Community Power an email at renewcommpower@gmail.com and we'll let you know when we have some renewable energy infrastructure ready to invest in. Breaking the back of coal in Queensland, and Australia, is something the world desperately needs.

And keep recycling :)