Earth Hour: Media Hype or Effective Awareness Building?

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I enjoyed my Earth Hour at home with a warm bath and some pleasant conversation with my husband. It was surprisingly relaxing to spend an evening without lights, tv or computer, but did it really make a difference?

In the long run, spending an hour in the dark once a year is unlikely to significantly reduce my carbon footprint, or impact climate change in a meaningful way. So does this mean its all just media hype?

Of course not! Earth Hour is about building awareness about climate change and how each of us can make choices that can help to reduce our impact on the planet. Its about how collectively we are powerful. Its about making us think about the things we do.

Earth Hour was a reminder for me about how much I take for granted. Lights that turn on at the flick of a switch, television, my computer, constant hot water, a hot drink in minutes, smoke free cooking (well most of the time!) . . .

For a quarter of humanity this is sheer luxury. Some 1.6 billion people live without electricity. In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on wood, charcoal and animal dung to meet their energy needs for cooking. Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day.

Earth Hour made me think about the way my family and I consume resources as we go about our daily lives. There is a huge global disparity between the haves and the have-nots:

The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent (The State of Consumption)

By choosing to consume less - whether it be electricity, chocolate bars or petrol - we do something to even things up. By choosing to consume less and donating even a portion of the savings we make to charities that address global poverty we are doing even more.

What did Earth Hour mean to you?

Take the Earth Hour to Earth Day Challenge

The cool folk at Cool People Care have issued the Earth Hour to Earth Day Challenge. Between Earth Hour on March 28th and Earth Day on April 22nd they're challenging us to do one thing each day that educates someone else as to the very green changes they could make in their life.

Are you up for it?

If you are I want to know. Leave me a comment and tell me what you're doing so I can help spread the word. I'll be posting my EH2ED update every day from the 28th March to 22nd April.

If you're stuck for ideas Cool People Care have a few to get you started:

• Post on your blog what you're doing to make it from Earth Hour to Earth Day
• Send a tweet to your followers that includes a link to an informative article about climate change. (Follow me on Twitter here)
  
• Join a Facebook eco-conscious cause or group each day, or use some of the great eco-conscious Facebook applications.
  
• Send daily text messages to your friends to reduce, reuse or recycle
• Upload pictures of the earth's beauty to your Flickr account
• Tell the world via YouTube about an environmental cause you care about
• Change your email signature, sending people to an informative Web site
  

What will YOU be doing?

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Earth Hour coming to Southland

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Its Earth Hour 2009 at 8:30pm on Saturday, March 28. An hour to turn out the lights and send a message that people worldwide are ready to work together and fight global warming.

Have you signed up for Earth Hour 2009?

I am disappointed to notice that in New Zealand, Earth Hour seems to have been embraced only by local Councils from Christchurch north.

Fortunately for Southland, its not all bad. Although our local councils might not care about Climate Change (the Gore District Council doesn't even provide adequate recycling facilities and feels curbside recycling is too expensive - feel free to contact them here and let them know what you think about that!!), the Eastern Southland Sustainable Living Group is in the throws of putting something together for the night. I will keep you posted!!

T-Shirts for Trees

WE ADD UP is a global campaign using organic cotton t-shirts that literally “counts you in” in the fight against global warming. Every shirt is printed by hand with a unique number. YOUR number represents your place in the sequential global count of all the people who are taking steps to help stop climate change. As the count grows, we demonstrate to the world that “WE ADD UP.” On the back of each organic cotton t-shirt is a word or phrase that describes an action almost anyone can take to reduce their carbon footprint - the contribution their lifestyle makes to greenhouse gases - such as, Unplug, Lights Off, Carpool, Hybrid, Bike, Buy Local, and 18 others. You choose which action you are committed to doing and get counted in. No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. And, WE ADD UP.

If you purchase a t-shirt through 'How to Make a Difference' then 10% of the purchase price goes to SALVEASERRA. And WE ADD UP donate 100% of their profit to charities working to stop global warming. And, what's more, if you purchase the Plant Trees t-shirt for only US$28 WE ADD UP will plant 10 (yes, ten!) trees in your name in the Rainforest.

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Bill McKibben Talks Organization, eActivism, Alinsky, and 350.org

Bill McKibben, one of the first people to bring global climate change to the attention of the general public, is one of the most articulate and well-respected voices in the modern environmental movement. His books on localism, environmentalism, and sustainability have sold millions and he presently directs the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism at Middlebury College in Vermont.

McKibben’s Step It Up Campaign, which took him across the state of Vermont by foot, made his demand for Congress to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 was one of the largest global climate change awareness campaigns to date. In 2006, I had the pleasure of seeing McKibben arrive to the fanfare of thousands of Vermonters in Burlington, Vermont at the end of his statewide walk with Sen. Bernie Sanders—then in the middle of his Congressional campaign—by his side. A follow-up campaign in 2007 stepped up expectations, demanding that the Senate reduce emissions by 10% over the next three years.

Now with the creation of 350.org, McKibben has taken his awareness campaign online. The number makes reference to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (350 per million) that would conceivably cause irreversible damage to the earth (read McKibben’s oped in the Washington Post about the number here). With the help of Internet communication, he plans on using their website to help to spread this message throughout the world. McKibben took some time to answer the following questions about bringing off-line activism online, online activism off-line, how living in Vermont influences his engagement as an activist, and more. . . read more

Thanks to Alexa from Make Something Happen for bringing this interview to my attention!

Check out The Point - another fantastic social networking site

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• Bill McKibben takes readers' questions about global warming.