Earth Hour 2: Insignificance Doubled
“Please take a bow, Sydney
Last night Mother Earth hosted a candlelight supper for a few million close friends.”
coos the unbelievably smug smh.com.au
To begin something of a tradition, I would like to call readers’ attention to this before-and-after ‘Earth Hour’ shot released by the originator of ‘Earth Hour’, the Sydney Morning Turd Herald:
While the campaign has clearly been 100% successful in getting large public buildings to dim their ultimately pointless floodlighting, it does not seem to have been able to persuade them to dim any of their other lighting, and it does not seem to have persuaded any of the North Shore Harbourside dwellers who really ought to be Earth Hour’s bread and butter (the idea was dreamt up over a Mosman back fence, after all). Indeed, the lack of interest in Earth Hour this year was crushing compared to last year when, as I argued then, hardly anyone observed it anyway.
Earth Hour is a media fiction from start to finish, although kudos to the SMH this year for not photoshopping the evidence as it did last time. Its only really enthusiastic backer seems to be the NSW state government, which is surely the worst endorsement imaginable, given that under Morris Iemma the state government as embarked on a course of environmental assault worthy of Cyril Sneer.
Update: the Harold is now trumpeting a 5% national reduction in power consumption as the net gain from ‘Earth Hour’.
Paul Bird from the National Electricity Market Management Company told ABC Radio the impact of last night’s Earth Hour event was the equivalent of two large power stations (or 1000 mega-watts) being temporarily shut down.
This may be so, but since two large power stations were not actually temporarily shut down, there wasn’t actually any decrease in carbon dioxide output, was there? Indeed, as Andrew Leigh points out (thanks to Emmeline in the comments to this post for pointing that out), the carbon dioxide output of the insipid candles purchased for the occasion means that ‘Earth Hour’ actually increases CO2 output.
liam wrote:
Well said Mark. I usually don’t mind saccharine efforts at futile political symbolism—I’m very fond of anti-war marches when they’re appropriate—but Earth Hour left a very sour consumerist taste in the mouth.
Where’s my copy of Fight Club? You are not your job. You are not the consumer purchases you make or don’t make. You are not the energy you use or don’t use, etc. etc.
emmeline wrote:
Hear, hear. We marked Earth Hour by refusing to dim the few energy efficient globes that happened to be on. Somewhat like this amusing description of events in economist Andrew Leigh’s household.
And don’t even start me on the people who drive halfway across town for a candle-lit Earth Hour dinner or bbq. The news reports keep citing a 10 per cent reduction in carbon emissions… but how is that calculated? I’m guessing the number would be smaller if you took into account the carbon impact of special Earth Hour events and replacing energy efficient globes with candles or torches.
American Pundit Fighting (not verified) wrote:
For me dimming the lights seems a wrong and futile way to approach a symbolic message for Global Warming. However doing the opposite is equally absurd.
Have you ever been in a traffic jam on a freeway. Then you see start seeing people come up along the bikepath and try to overtake everyone. Then you get peeved, and start calling them jerks. Then guys in front of start swerving to the left to block the overtakers, but they always manage to break through the stalemate anyway. Then you start thinking, thats kind of wanky what the blockers did.
That’s how i feel about Earth hour. Not on Global warming as a whole. Just this exercise.
Watch Glenn beck being wanky albeit slightly amusing here “Coal Week”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL48jXRf-ps
I just realised I don’t know which side is which in my analogy.
anonymous (not verified) wrote:
What a futile crock of futility! It would all be ok if only Australia would sign Kyoto!
oh, hang on
yalphax (not verified) wrote:
Hiya,
“This may be so, but since two large power stations were not actually temporarily shut down, there wasn’t actually any decrease in carbon dioxide output, was there?”
I think the workings of power stations are a bit more sophisticated than simply being in a state of being ‘on’ or ‘off’. Do you not think that they might be able to ramp down production across the network because there is a drop in demand (say, by 1000 MW)?
The key, and I would say bleedingly obvious word in Paul Birds statement was ‘equivalent’.
I work in the environmental field and appreciate genuine and rigorous criticism of sustainability efforts that are almost always intended to reduce our negative impacts on the earth. It helps to make sure things are being done in the best way possible.
You suggest that events like Earth Hour are fluff because they are driven by emotion and aren’t a rational way of addressing the problem of climate change. However, your comments seem to be just as emotion driven and non-rational and simply seem to arise from a distaste for things that are ‘popular’ rather than a concern for good sustainability initiatives.
At least the organisers of Earth Hour were honest in promoting it as being a symbolic event rather than a realistic attempt to cut the world use of fossil fuels.
Perhaps you could think about being a bit more honest with yourself and your readers before your blog joins SMH in the ranks of the ‘unbelievably smug’.
Mark wrote:
No, I don’t believe that the output of electricity was reduced one iota because of Earth Hour. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I don’t believe it actually happened - though do please correct me if I’m wrong.
I don’t argue against Earth hour because it is ‘emotional’ or ‘non-rational’. You are the first person in the thread to invoke either emotion or rationality. I condemn it because I believe it does not do anything.
I believe that many people believed it had a more than merely symbolic function. Beyond that, I do not understand what it is supposed to symoblise. I do not believe it even serves a symbolic function against climate change. I believe it’s true function is to make people like you feel good about themselves.*
*This is does not make the event emotional or non-rational by the way. Feeling good about oneself is neither an emotion, nor non-rational. It’s just counterproductive in the field of combating climate change when it is allied to futile gestures instead of concrete action.
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