earth hour
28 Mar 2008
A Blaze of Conceit Will Light up the World
Helen Razer casts her wit onto some of the organisations behind our night of conspicuous under-consumption
As you are doubtless apprised, the world is headed for fiery hell by means of a hand cart. The hand cart, which I imagine to be wrought from polymethyl and the suffering of others, is laden with genetically modified foods and bits of corporate tinsel. As conceit and carbon emit from a shopping vehicle that can no longer be sustained thanks to our avarice and bad taste, we can assuage our terror at the demise of the planet with two happy facts.First, Al Gore has manfully marshalled a subsidiary career as a power point hero. Second, hand-spun busybodies who might once have campaigned for local council are now busy coordinating Earth Hour.
If you haven't already heard, Earth Hour ticks over this weekend. The plucky initiative of some Sydney geezer, this event promotes a global switching off of lights, Bamix hand-held mixers and sundry small electricals.
Sadly, the stoic happening will not occur in glorious international simulcast. This is no doubt due to the bias of Universal Time. If the Earth Hour people were to insist on a synchronized global power hiatus, we poor Australians would be suffering through a DVD intermission while our sleeping fellows in Connecticut missed their chance at enacting an eye-catching outage.
Thanks to Sharyn Raggett
What, after all, would be the point of unconscious power saving? If one's efforts to save the earth are unnoticed, they hardly count.
To be clear: I'm all for saving the planet. I'm quite fond of plants, water and lungs relatively untrammelled by the ravages of capital. Further, I am not an ultraconservative right-wing blogger who amuses himself in the work of bashing out malarkey that gainsays common scientific opinion viz the earth is stuffed. I'm all in favour of doing something or other to halt the giddy torrents of waste etc.
But I'm not entirely convinced that an hour of conspicuous under-consumption is the answer. And I don't care particularly that these efforts are sincere or might just pass for "consciousness raising." Foremost, I'm suspicious of any ostensibly wholesome event that is supported by Triple M.
But Triple M, an organisation that would surely bust in a cap and trade exchange of hot air, is one of Earth Hour's more blameless sponsors. Event organiser, the World Wide Fund for Nature, has taken the world's shiniest and most efficient purveyor of trans fats aboard its ship of fools. McDonalds, an enterprise of which you may have heard, will take pause in its annual donation of a million tons of packaging and dim its lights for an hour.
A flotilla of superior cuisinartists too have joined the WWF. Just as long as the cautious diner refrains from calculating the environmental cost of his rare wagyu fillet, he can conflate privilege with protest. And the rest of us can eat our burgers with imagined impunity.
Bugger off. And Richard Branson and his jets can naff off too. I'm going to be offsetting the last plane ride I took to see my Olds for the next five years. What's Richard doing about his convoy of carbon? Other than using the guileless shield of Earth Hour to obscure it.
A typically optimistic riposte to naive, compromised rubbish like Earth Hour will run, "Well, if it helps just one person change their ways, the world will be a better place."
This credo, so often evoked in bleeding heart enterprise, might be plausible in the cases of binge drinking, diabetes awareness week et al. But, to yelp the obvious, it is entire economies and overarching corporate practices that must change. The individual savouring sumac by the smug glow of a paraffin lamp just ain't going to cut it.
Milder cynics will insist that Earth Hour will do little harm. As a grumpy bastard, I insist upon the opposite. This showy misuse of compassion transforms a critical concern into the individual's Chance to Shine. We'll need no lights on Saturday evening. The blaze of conceit will light up the world.
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Couldn’t agree more.
I understand Richard Branson will be attending the V (Virgin) Festival in Sydney during ‘the’ Earth Hour. Unless they switch off the amps & lighting, fire up the ciggie lighters and sing ‘kumbaya’ for an hour… I’m thinking this PR stunt couldn’t be any more shameless.
Yeah, why not just turn everything off (except maybe the fridge) and walk around the streets for an hour or so, an hour and forty minutes if you want to miss The Bill ? No candles, no flashlights: just meet the neighbours for the first time, share your tofu and bean sprouts with them, try their cumquat and cabbage frostie.
Only, for God’s sake, don’t think that anyone has done anything special - one hour out of every year ? 0.0114 % of the year ? The cost of that warm inner glow is bound to outweigh 0.0114 % of annual power usage. Instead, contribute to the cost of a wind tower or a solar panel, for example. There’s a thought: the little darlings of Upper North-East Dusty Plains Primary School can raise funds for one solar panel for their school. Or the kids of Lower South Oodnagalarby Secondary College can go around gathering contributions for another wind tower to power their desalination plant.
Seriously: how about a 2008 Earth Hour wind tower for some remote Indigenous settlement ? Where do I send my ten dollars ?
I can’t find anything on the earth hour site suggesting I ‘do something’ different to what I already do!
How is this some sort of conscience raising campaign if the activities are no different to what we should all be doing every hour of the day?
Don’t forget, the ad agency which is selling Earth Hour is Leo Burnett: http://www.leoburnett.com/
Burnett’s core clients include GM, McDonald’s and Philip Morris (since 1954).
Earth Hour: This month, turn your brain off
Are you sure of your facts? I have it on good authority that if I switch off my lights for an hour, global warming will die.
In fact, the real worry is that if too many people turn their lights off, it could precipitate an ice age.
This could easily reduce our carbon footprint by leading to the deaths of several old people unable to freely navigate around their houses due to the darkness. Each of them out of the picture can only lead to more savings, carbon wise. I think it would be better to turn the traffic lights off for one hour, though, as that’ll amass a far larger body count. On top of that, with all those cars being taken out of action, there’s less emissions from vehicles that would otherwise be driving around.
There’s a lot of potential here to make some real changes.
- Got Elf?
Hi, Helen,
Grump bastard? Naah! Next to Harlan Ellison (a buddy from the USA), you’re positively Ghandi-esque!
You — and the responders to your execllent article — DID, however, fail to note that one could take part in the Earth Hour, um, movement, and use the opportunity to fire up a few candles, slip into a warm bath with one’s sweetie (or whomever/whatever happens to be handy) and have just a lot of fun in the dark for an hour — or two, if you’re as productive as at least two new Melbournians that I know of.
Cheers,
Truewrit
There are a million kids around Australia, they are everywhere. Seriously, why can’t they be enthused and mobilised to collect funds on Earth Day next year for wind towers for remote and poor rural towns ? A million kids could extract ten million dollars from the rest of us, and that could go a long way to providing renewable power for twenty or twenty five depressed small towns every year. Now that would be a movement.
It would beat bon-fires, and well-lit concerts, and restaurants dimly lit by dozens of smoky candles, and teenagers lighting their farts.
Thank-you for covering this i will place a link on my site. I was told off by my niece for even discussing possible dubious interests and finally had to comply…reminiscent of the youth in 1984 watching and reporting back on any suspicious activities of their elders…smart mind control politics.
After several emails on serious issues to GET UP, and no response, i was wondering what their credentials were and some research revealed it to be a corporate ‘SET UP’ for the benefit of capturing the idle guilt of middle class Australia, in much the same way the Greens work as a political party…for anyone who doubts this go to a Greens gathering and have a face to face chat with Bob Brown and you will get the drift quickly.
Anyway, good work and for anyone who is considering signing up to GET UP or has, contact your credit card company, and request a refund because it is another FRAUD!
Who "SET UP" "GET UP"?
http://rosettamoon.copley.org.au/?p=8
yeah, i know that this was just a token gesture. i took part in it for that reason. who can honestly say that any government, company or organisation is actively attacking climate change? it is going to take an overhaul of life as we know it. not one company is prepared to let their profit margins slip for the better good of humankind- how does that comply with capitalism or their shareholders for that matter? then we have the government investing in many a ludicrous scheme to half-heartedly combat climate change. has anyone considered what will happen down the track from stuffing large amounts of carbon underground? i am reminded of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer stuffs garbage into unused mine shafts, only to have to move Springfield 10kms over. i wonder where we could the planet to?
p.s- last line "i wonder where we could move the planet to?